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The  Relation  of  Berkeley's  Later 
to  His  Earlier  Idealism 


BY 

CARL  V.  TOWER,  A.M.,    Ph.D., 

INSTRUCTOR   IN   PHILOSOPHY    IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF    MICHIGAN. 


PRESENTED    TO  THE 

FACULTY   OF   CORNELL  UNIVERSITY   FOR   THE    DEGREE 

OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


ANN   ARBOR: 
1899. 


The  Relation  of  Berkeley's  Later 
to  His  Earlier  Idealism 


BY 

CARL  V.  TOWER,  A.M.,  Ph.D., 

INSTRUCTOR    IN    PHILOSOPHY    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    MICHIGAN. 


PRESENTED    TO    THE 

FACULTY   OF   CORNELL   UNIVERSITY    FOR   THE    DEGREE 

OF    DOCTOR    OF    PHILOSOPHY. 


ANN    ARBOR 
1899. 


• 


TH 


E  INLAND  PRESS,  ANN  ARBOR,  MICH. 


ps\ 


ERRATA. 

Page     7.  Note  1,  read  p.  176. 

Page  12.  Note  5,  read  note  3,  p.  47. 

Page  13.  Note  1,  read  note  3,  page  47. 

Page  20.  Line  10,  read  muscle  instead  of  muscular. 

Page  55.  Line  29,  read  mists  instead  of  midst. 

Page  66.  Line  24,  read  Humian  instead  of  human. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE 

UNIVERSIT 

ORNJJ 


CONTENTS. 


1.  Introduction. 

2.  Abstract  Ideas. 

(a)  Abstract  Images. 

(b)  Universals. 


CHAPTER  II. 


Ideas  and  Things. 

1.  Idea  as  Mere  Sensation. 

2.  Idea  as  Percept. 

3.  Spirit,  Phenomenon  and  Idea. 


CHAPTER  III.    Constitution  of  Experience. 

1.  Relations. 

(a)  Arbitrary  Connection. 

(b)  Necessary  Connection. 

2.  Notions  and  Their  Objects. 

(a)  Notion  of  Relations. 

(b)  Notion  of  Spirit. 

CHAPTER  IV.    Conclusion. 


179916 


CHAPTER  I. 

§    I.        INTRODUCTION. 

On  one  of  the  pages  of  Berkeley's  Commonplace  Book,  the 
author  notes  that  ''nothing  can  be  a  proof  against  one  side  of  a 
contradiction  that  bears  equally  hard  upon  the  other."  One  might 
be  inclined  to  admit  that  a  just  estimate  of  the  Berkeleian  philos- 
ophy resolves  itself  into  this  reflection,  if  it  were  not  that  historical 
evidence  decidedly  favors  a  more  positive  interpretation.  Unfor- 
tunately, the  true  appreciation  of  the  attitude  adopted  toward 
Reality  by  a  philosopher  who,  like  Berkeley,  is  not  a  system-maker 
— scarcely  a  systematizer  of  philosophic  conceptions — is  often 
partially  obscured  by  the  fact  that  the  positive  construction  placed 
upon  his  work  by  subsequent  thinking  sometimes  emphasizes  the 
negative  element  of  his  philosophy,  and  so  isolates  it  from  the 
course  of  later  philosophical  development.  This  is  a  truism, 
but  its  explanation  simply  is  that  the  spirit  of  philosophy  respects 
the  system  by  which  its  course  of  development  is  for  a  time 
apparently  arrested.  When  theory  succeeds  theory  in  rapid  suc- 
cession, the  progress  of  thought  is  in  single  file.  A  feature,  an 
aspect,  is  sufficient  to  constitute  a  farther  step  in  advance.  The 
value  of  the  theory  is  merely  extensive,  while  that  of  the  system  is 
also  intensive.  The  system  serves  always  to  recall  the  personality 
of  the  system  maker,  the  theory  is  merged  in  its  later  outgrowths, 
apart  from  which  it  is  abstract  and  featureless. 

Berkeley  was  not  the  creator  of  a  system.  Rather  was  he  a 
man  with  a  theory  of  life,  of  morals,  of  Reality.  Thus  it  is  not 
surprising  if,  in  his  philosophy,  the  many  definite  tendencies  in  the 
direction  of  Empiricism  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  almost  the 
only  positive  elements  in  his  conception  of  the  world.1  The  his- 
tory of  philosophy  makes  evident  the  value  of  Berkeley  as  a  link 
in  the  empirical  succession  from  Locke  to  Mill,  though  with 
regard  to  his  philosophy  as  a  whole,  it  may  likewise  be  said  that 
Empiricism  forms  a  negative  rather  than  a  positive  element.  The 
lines  of  thought  followed  by  him  in  his  earlier  metaphysical  under- 
taking are  undoubtedly  those  which  make  most  clearly  and  defi- 
nitely toward  the  empirical  views  adopted  by  his  successors.      It 

1  "  In  its  best  known  form,  as  a  factor  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  only  an 
empirical  idealism."     Burt:   "A  History  of   Modern  Philosophy  M  ( 1S92). 


—  6  — 

was,  perhaps,  unfortunate  for  the  later  acceptance  of  the  Berke- 
leian  theory  of  immaterialism,  in  a  form  more  acceptable  to  its 
originator,  that  the  '  new  doctrine  '  found  so  ready  an  acceptance 
as  to  what  have  since  been  regarded  as  its  essential  features:  The 
Cartesian  dualism  of  thought  and  existence,  so  haltingly  maintained 
by  Locke1  in  his  doctrine  of  substance,  added  to  Berkeley's  own 
nominalistic  tendency  and  further  sustained  by  his  religious  '  re- 
pugnance '  to  an  atheistical,  unthinking  '  matter',  were  the  forces 
at  work  in  the  life  of  Berkeley,  which  early  culminated  in  his  view 
that,  upon  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  abstract  matter,  there 
lay  at  stake  the  consistency  of  human  reason  with  itself,  and  our 
only  warrant  for  the  objectivity  of  the  ideals  which  human  reason 
sets  for  itself.  It  may  indeed  be  objected  that  these  ideals,  being 
so  apparently  of  a  theological  cast,  were  the  rocks  and  stubble 
which  prevented  the  successful  spading  up  of  false  notions  und  pre- 
judices so  vigorously  begun.  But  as  Berkeley  does  not  lay  claim 
to  a  philosophy  without  presuppositions,  so  neither  does  he  regard 
the  prepossessions  of  his  opponents  as  in  themselves  obstacles  to 
truth,  provided  only  the  motives  underlying  them  be  not  inherently 
self -contradictory. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  motive  which  determined  Berke- 
ley to  become  the  promulgator  of  immaterialism,  the  discoverer 
himself  seemed  scarcely  aware  that  the  world  was  already  ripe  for 
his  views.  In  the  enthusiasm  which  formed  the  necessary  accom- 
paniment of  the  awakening  consciousness  of  his  mission  in  the 
world  of  philosophy,  Berkeley  was  in  part  led  to  misconstrue 
the  task  which  he  had  set  for  himself.  Aware  that  he  was  to  inau- 
gurate a  revolution  in  the  current  modes  of  metaphysical  thinking, 
and  mindful  of  the  "mighty  sect  of  men"  which  was  to  oppose 
him,  the  single  problem  of  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  mat- 
ter assumed  for  him  a  size  disproportionate  to  its  true  significance, 
in  view  of  the  other  questions  which  an  idealistic  philosophy  is 
called  upon  to  solve.  Immaterialism2  is  far  removed  from  idealism 
in  any  positive  and  definite  sense,  though  the  former  meant  for 
Berkeley  the  latter,  and  accordingly  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  im- 
materiality of  matter — the  first  step  in  the  idealistic  progression 
which  ensued,  his  early  efforts  are  chiefly  directed.  The  success 
which  he  attained  in  the  clear  and  forcible  series  of  arguments  em- 
bodied in  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  was  at  the  time 
grudgingly  attested  in  comments,  which,  however,  may  best  be  ex- 
pressed in  the  words  of  the  more  favorably  disposed  critic,  Hume: 

i  Cf.  T.  H.  Webb:   "Veil  of  Isis,"  p.  12. 

2  "It  is  the  negative  side  of  his  philosophy  to  which— unfortunately,  but 
naturally — he  was  led  in  his  early  works  to  give  the  greatest  relative  considera- 
tion."    Morris:   "British  Thought  and  Thinkers",  p.  221. 


Berkeley's  arguments  says  he,    "admit  of  no  answer  and  produce 
no  conviction."1 

"  But  the  lessons  in  scepticism  which  Hume  drew  from  them 
were  foreign,  not  only  to  the  spirit  and  intention  of  Berkeley,  but 
in  not  a  few  instances,  even  in  his  earlier  philosophy  seemed  directly 
opposed  to  the  mould  in  which  it  was  cast.  Berkeley  certainly  over- 
shot his  mark  in  his  too  vigorous  insistence  upon  the  sensuous 
character  of  all  that  we  know;  and  in  consequence  the  objectivity 
of  thought  relations,  which  any  idealism  of  value  must  in  some 
sense  lay  claim  to  discover,  appear,  indeed,  in  his  philosophy  as 
a  background,  but  highly  colored  with  theological  notions.  His 
idealism,  being  a  theory  rather  than  a  system,  the  various  aspects 
which  it  assumes  are  external  to  one  another;  yet  one  form  of  ideal- 
ism drops  out  of  sight,  rather  than  is  premeditatedly  abandoned 
for  another.  He  runs  the  whole  gamut  of  idealisms  from  phe- 
nomenalism to  what  is  in  the  end  very  like  Platonic  Realism. 
There  is  something  kaleidescopic  about  this  progression,  one  can- 
not say  that  there  is  any  true  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
earlier  and  the  later,  although  the  fundamental  difference  is  appa- 
rent. Berkeley  never  deepens  his  conceptions  to  the  extent  of 
fully  ascertaining  if  they  are  in  agreement  or  non-agreement  with 
the  propositions  which  form  the  starting  point  of  his  early  posi- 
tion.2 Thus  there  results  a  number  of  seemingly  heterogeneous 
lines  of  thought  which  are,  in  great  part,  rather  suggestions  and 
beginnings  in  thought  than  steps  in  a  course  of  logical  development. 
If,  then,  our  interpretation  shall  endeavor  to  determine  the  resultant 
of  these  lines  of  thought  it  ought  to  effect  this,  not  by  a  process  of 
subjectively  balancing  the  evidence  for  or  against  the  earlier  or  the 
later  theory  as  representative  of  Berkeley,  but  by  taking  such  ex- 
plicit utterances  as  he  offers  us  in  his  general  attitude  toward  phil- 
osophy other  than  his  own.  Berkeley  has  most  frequently  been 
regarded  as  an  extreme  Nominalist,  and  upon  this  basis  largely 
rests  the  claim  of  Empiricism  upon  him  as  its  representative.  This 
Nominalism,  whether  of  an  extreme  or,  as  some  would  have  it,  of 
a  modified   type,    is   best  set   forth  in  his  discussion  of  Abstract 


1  Works;  Hume  IV,  p.  181. 

'*  ''We  may  be  "inclined  to  wonder,"  says  Balfour  in  his  biographical  introduc- 
tion to  Berkeley's  works,  that  a  man  who  had  done  so  much  before  he  was  thirty,  had 
not  done  much  more  by  the  time  he  was  sixty.  *  *  *  That  he  produced  so 
little  in  his  maturer  years  is  doubtless  due  in  part  to  temperament,  and  to  the  dis- 
traction of  an  unsettled  and  wandering  life,  but  it  must  also  be  largely  attributed 
to  the  almost  total  absence  of  intelligent  criticism,  either  from  friends  or  foes,  under 
which  Berkeley  suffered  throughout  the  whole  period  during  which  criticism  might 
have  aroused  him  to  make  some  serious  effort  to  develop  or  to  defend  the  work  of 
his  youth."  "The  Works  of  George  Berkeley,''  edited  by  George  Sampson, 
1808. 


—  8  — 

Ideas,  which  constitutes  his  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Hu 
man  Knowledge,  and  it   is   accordingly  with   this  work  as  a  basis 
that  we  shall  introduce  the  first  of  the  topics  in  this  discussion. 


§    2.        ABSTRACT    IDEAS. 

(a)  Abstract  Images. 

The  philosophical  discussions  and-dialogues  of  Berkeley  every- 
where abound  in  figures,  and  the  effect  of  his  metaphors  is  sometimes 
to  make  one  think  that  the  Platonism  of  his  later  years  was  indeed  the 
undercurrent  of  his  life,  for  a  time  obscured  by  the  new  discovery 
which  attracted  him  in  his  youth.  The  predominating  figure  which, 
in  his  early  philosophy,  serves  to  clothe  his  conception  of  the 
world  is  that  of  the  analogy  of  human  language  to  a  divine  lan- 
guage, which  forms  the  interpretable  system  of  nature.  Our  fail- 
ure to  interpret  correctly  this  divine  nature-language  is  in  a  large 
measure  owing  to  our  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  true  function  of 
human  language. 

Now  Philosophers  have  generally  regarded  the  paradoxes  and 
inconsistencies  that  reason  is  wont  to  encounter  in  its  search  for 
metaphysical  truth  as  due  to  the  inherent  weakness  of  our  faculties 
which,  being  finite,  are  unable  to  "penetrate  into  the  inward 
essence  and  constitution  of  things"1  in  themselves  infinite.  But 
"it  is  a  hard  thing  to  suppose  right  deductions  from  true  princi- 
ples should  ever  end  in  consequences  which  cannot  be  maintained 
or  made  consistent."2  Human  reason,  we  should  think,  ought,  if 
unhindered,  to  yield  more  satisfactory  conclusions  to  the  problems 
which  it  has  it  self  raised,  and  "we  should  believe  that  God  has 
dealt  more  bountifully  with  the  sons  of  men  than  to  give  them  a 
strong  desire  for  that  knowledge  which  he  had  placed  quite  out  of 
their  reach."3 

The  errors  to  which  the  untrammelled  exercise  of  reason  has 
given  rise  have  been  attributed  solely  to  the  finitude  of  reason  as 
such,  and  it  has  not  yet  been  sufficiently  pointed  out  that  the  most 
fruitful  source  of  them  is  language.  The  flexibility  of  language, 
which  adapts  it  to  ordinary  intercourse  and  the  common  business 
of  life,  becomes  its  chief  difficulty  when  it  is  of  necessity  em- 
ployed in  the  nicer  discriminations  of  metaphysics.  Here  as 
everywhere  the  word  is  our  master,  or  is  likely  to  become  so,  if  the 
relations  which  it  bears  to  our  reasoning  be  not  definitely  under- 
stood. 

1  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  §  2. 

2  Ibid.  §  3. 

3  Ibid. 


—  9  — 

Usually  the  word  may  be  said  to  signify  a  conscious  process; 
frequently,  also,  it  does  not.  In  the  former  case  a  conscious  con- 
tent is  the  equivalent  of  the  word,  in  the  latter  merely  a  cerebral 
process.  "Fear,  love,  hatred,  admiration,  and  disdain,  and  the 
like,  arise  immediately  in  the  mind  upon  the  perception  of  certain 
words,  without  any  ideas  coming  between  "  ' — or,  on  the  other  hand 
the  word  may  arouse  as  its  equivalent  a  more  or  less  definite  idea. 
Language  has  thus  other  uses  than  that  of  arousing  conscious  pro- 
cesses by  coupling  a  word  with  a  particular  definitely  recognized 
conscious  content  or  idea,  since  the  word  may  arouse  to  action  or 
passion  without  the  intervention  of  the  idea.  Thus  we  see  that  a 
word  may  stand  for  no  idea  at  all.  or  it  may  stand  for  other  par- 
ticular ideas  than  that  of  which  it  serves  as  the  sign  in  any  particu- 
lar instance. 

But  the  adaptability  of  language  to  the  demands  made  upon  it 
by  ordinary  life  render  it  impossible  for  a  word,  by  means  of  a  fixed 
definition,  to  correspond  in  every  case  to  the  same  definite  con- 
scious content.  The  definition  indeed  serves  to  govern  and 
restrict  the  corresponding  idea  to  relation^  among  other  ideas  to 
which  the  definition  is  also  applicable;  but  it  is  not  true  that  the 
word  stands  always  for  the  same  idea.  The  mistaken  notion  that 
every  name  has  "one  only  precise  and  settled  signification"  2  has 
occasioned  the  belief  in  abstract  ideas  or  abstract  notions  from 
which  has  sprung  much  confusion  in  metaphysical  thinking. 
Thus  men  have  come  to  regard  the  concepts  of  qualities,  or  of 
beings,  which  include  several  coexistent  qualities,  as  abstract  ideas. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  see  a  little  way  into  the  difficulty 
which  Berkeley  finds  with  the  'abstract  idea'  of  his  opponents. 
Without  attempiing  in  this  place  to  establish  a  rigid  definition  of 
the  Berkeleyian  idea,  it  may  be  noted  that  is  is  oftenest  synonymous 
with  the  above  acceptation  of  a  particular,  definite,  recognizable 
content  of  consciousness.  The  freedom  which  Locke  allowed 
himself  in  the  definition  of  idea  as,  "whatever  is  the  object  of  the 
understanding  when  a  man  thinks  "3  is  a  liberty  which  Berkeley 
does  nothing  to  restrict.  The  two  conditions  which  it  seems  are 
everywhere  necessary  to  the  idea  are  that  it  shall  be  (a)  a  content 
of  consciousness,  (b)  recognized  as  a  definite  content  of  conscious- 
ness, i.  e.,  perceived. 

Now  the  abstract  idea  appears  in  Berkeley's  eyes  to  be  in  the 
following  anomalous  position.  As  idea,  it  must  be  recognizable  as 
a  definite  content  of  consciousness,  but,  as  abstract,  it  must — so 
it  is  claimed — be  different  in  kind  from  the  particulars,  out  of  which, 

1  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge;  §  20  of  Introduction. 

2  Ibid.  §  18. 

3  "  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding."     Introduction,  §  8 


—  10  — 

by  observation  of  their  common  likenesses,  the  abstract  idea  has 
been  formed.  What  Berkeley  seems  to  say  to  his  opponents  in  his 
polemic  against  abstract  ideas  is  in  effect  this:  'You  tell  me  that 
there  are  such  things  as  abstract  ideas — that  besides  the  ideas  of 
sense,  the  ideas  of  imagination,  the  ideas  "perceived  by  attending 
to  the  passions  and  operations  of  the  mind,"1  the  ideas  of  mem- 
ory, ete.,  etc.,  you  have  also  ideas  from  which  all  particulars  are 
excluded,  and  which,  though  relating  to  the  particular  ideas  that 
may  be  subsumed  under  them,  are  not  themselves  particular.  But 
if  these  ideas  for  which  you  contend  are  anything  at  al/,  they  are 
recognizable  by  you  as  definite  conscious  contents,  and  are  thus 
particular,  and,  in  so  far,  like  the  other  particular  ideas  which  you 
have.  You  can  accordingly  describe  them,  and,  having  recourse 
to  introspection,  you  must  surely  discover  that  all  you  have  are 
particular  ideas.  By  some  of  these  ideas  you  may  indeed  denote 
numbers  of  other  particular  ideas — but  nowhere  will  you  find  the 
thing  you  call  abstract  idea.' 

If  the  foregoing  is  a  correct  interpretation  of  Berkeley's 
thought  about  abstract  ideas,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  his  difficulty 
with  them  lay  in  the  unimaginableness  of  such  things.  An  abstract 
image  is,  as  Fraser  says,  manifestly  absurd.2  Taken  in  this  sense 
it  is  doubtful  if  Locke — whom  Berkeley  seems  to  have  chiefly  in 
mind — ever  seriously  contended  for  such  a  thing.3  On  the  other 
hand,  if  Berkeley  be  not  understood  to  have  thus  misconceived  the 
doctrine  of  his  opponent  as  grossly  as  ever  Locke  misconstrued 
Descartes'  'innate  ideas,'  the  distinction  between  his  own  view 
and  that  of  the  upholder  of  abstract  ideas  is  far  less  than  is  often 
supposed.  For  Berkeley  by  no  means  denies  the  possibility  of 
there  being  general  ideas.  All  he  denies  is  that  there  are  general 
ideas  or  general  notions  taken  in  the  above  sense  of  abstract 
images.  Let  us  see  if  Locke's  own  description  of  abstract  ideas 
may  serve  further  to  explain  Berkeley's  difficulties. 

Locke  says:  "  The  use  of  words  then  being  to  stand  as  out- 
ward marks  of  our  internal  ideas,  and  those  ideas  being  taken 
from  particular  things,  if  every  particular  idea  that  we  take  in 
should  have  a  distinct  name,  names  must  be  endless.  To  prevent 
this,  the  mind  makes  particular  ideas  received  from  particular 
objects  to  become  general;  which  is  done  by  considering  them  as 
they  are  in  the  mind  such  appearances — separate  from  other  exist- 
ences, and  the  circumstances  of  real  existence,  as  time,  place,  or 

1  "  Principles,"  §  i. 

2  Selections,  p  19,  note. 

3  Like  Berkeley,  "Locke  has  everywhere  a  sober  dread  of  abstraction,  and 
clings  to  the  particular  and  concrete  with  a  sense  of  the  risk  of  losing  the  real  in 
the  emptiness  of  the  universal."  Locke's  'Essay';  Fraser's  ed.,  vol.  II,  p.  101, 
note  2. 


—  11  — 

any  other  concomitant  ideas.  This  is  called  abstraction,  whereby 
ideas  taken  from  particular  beings  become  general  representatives 
of  all  of  the  same  kind;  and  their  names  general  names,  applicable 
to  whatever  exists  conformable  to  such  abstract  ideas.  Such  pre- 
cise naked  appearances  in  the  mind'" — -which  Beckeley  takes  to  mean 
images — "  without  considering  how,  whence,  or  with  what  others 
they  come  there,  the  understanding  lays  up  (with  names  commonly 
annexed  to  them)  as  the  standards  to  rank  real  existences  into  sorts, 
as  they  agree  with  these  patterns,  and  to  denominate  them  accord- 
ingly."1 

Now  this  passage  in  which  the  doctrine  of  abstraction  is  ex- 
plicitly set  forth,  does  not  of  itself  particularly  favor  Berkeley's 
interpretation  of  Locke,  but  the  subsequent  use  which  the  latter 
makes  of  abstractions  in  which  e.  g.  the  idea  of  extension  is  treated 
as  something  which  we  possess  apart  from  the  idea  of  that  which 
is  extended,  and  the  idea  of  hardness  apart  from  that  which  is  felt 
—  these,  coupled  with  the  passage  immediately  following  the  one 
we  have  just  quoted,  in  which  it  is  said  that  "the  having  of  gen- 
eral ideas  is  that  which  puts  a  perfect  distinction  betwixt  man  and 
brute,"  induce  Berkeley  to  think  that  the  having  of  abstract  ideas 
means  the  possession  of  a  faculty  the  existence  of  which  man  is 
not  able  to  verify  by  direct  introspection  of  himself  or  by  observa- 
tion of  the  way  in  which  objects  come  to  be  recognized  in  consci- 
ousness of  a  lower  order  than  his  own.  In  one  of  the  dialogues 
there  is  to  be  found  this  passage:  "  I  understand  that  the  several 
parts  of  the  world  became  gradually  preceivable  to  finite  spirits, 
endowed  with  proper  faculties."2  If  this  maybe  accepted  as  a 
hint  toward  an  indeal  evolution  or  spiritual  unfolding  of  nature,3 
it  may  be  seen  that  Berkley  would  naturally  rebel  against  the  claim 
that  man  possesses  a  faculty  so  different  in  kind4  from  that  belong- 
ing to  animals  of  a  lower  order  than  himself,  and  so  undesirable  as 
an  element  of  his  own  consciousness.  The  abstract  idea,  in  the 
sense  of  abstract  image — that  indescribable  something  which  is 
neither  this  nor  that  definite  and  particular  thing,  but  which  is  set 
over  against  the  other  definite  and  imaginable  contents  of  consci- 
ousness— an  idea  of  this  sort  Berkeley  claims  it  is  impossible  to/ 
frame. 

(b)    Universals. 

It  would  be  in  a  great  measure  to  anticipate  a  discussion  of 
the  notion  and  its  objects  if  we  were  at  this  point  to  dwell  at  length 
upon    Berkeley's   positive   conception   of  universals.      Yet    a    few 

1  Locke's  Essay,  Bk.  II,  Ch.  XI,  9. 

2  "  Philonous",  3d  dialogue. 

3Cf.  also,  "  Siris,"  note  2  of  Fraser's  "Selection's,"  p.  343. 
4Intro.  to  "Principles,"  §  n. 


—  12  — 

words  may  be  sufficient  to  show  that  with  the  abstract  idea,  in  any- 
other  sense  than  that  of  abstract  image,  he  finds  no  very  great 
difficulty.  He  regards  the  abstract  image  as  an  absurdity  because, 
although  a  content  of  consciousness  different  in  kind  from  particu 
lars,  it,  however,  always  reduces  itself  to  particulars  which  it  pro- 
fesses not  to  be.  "But,"  says  he,  "it  is  to  be  noted  that  I  do  not 
deny  absolutely  there  are  general  ideas,  but  only  that  there  are  any 
abstract  general  ideas;  for,  in  the  passage  we  have  quoted  wherein 
there  is  mention  of  general  ideas,  it  is  always  supposed  that  they 
are  formed  by  abstraction  after  the  manner  set  forth  in  sections  8 
and  9,"1  which  last  '-'I  do  not  think  a  whit  more  needful  for  the 
enlargement  of  knowledge  than  for  communication."2  "It  is,  I 
know,  a  point  much  insisted  on  that  all  knowledge  and  demonstra- 
tion are  about  universal  notions,  to  which  I  fully  agree;  but  then  it 
does  not  appear  to  me  that  those  notions  are  formed  by  abstrac- 
tion in  the  manner  premised — universality,  so  far  as  I  can  com- 
prehend, not  consisting  in  the  absolute,  positive3  nature  or  concep- 
tion of  anything,  but  in  the  relation  it  bears  to  the  particulars 
signified  or  represented  by  it;  by  virtue  whereof  it  is  that  things, 
names,  or  notions,  being  in  their  own  nature  particular,  are  ren- 
dered universal."4 

Thus  it  is  not  the  claim  that  we  are  able  to  generalize  experi- 
ence by  means  of  "universal  notions"  to  which  Berkeley  takes 
exception,  but  rather  the  claim,  which  rightly  or  wrongly  he  reads 
into  Locke,  "that  those  notions  are  formed  by  abstraction  in  the 
manner  premised."  And  it  is  not  so  much  the  process  of  abstrac- 
tion  that  he  objects  to  as  the  hypostatization  of  the  abstraction 
thus  formed;  for,  thus  hypostatized,  it  is  the  abstract  image  to 
which  every  element  of  particularity  is  denied.  The  abstract 
universal,  in  fulfilling  its  claim  to  be  idea  in  consciousness,  must 
have  its  sensuous  aspect,  and  so  must  submit  itself  to  the  condition 
of  being  particular,5  though  a  particular  with  a  universal  reference; 
but  this  necessary  element  of  particularity  is  denied  it  by  its 
claimants;  hence  the  falsity  and  uselessness  of  such  an  idea.  But 
it  might  be  objected  to  Berkeley,  this  abstract  universal  has  indeed 
a  sensuous  side,  though  the  particularity  of  the  idea  does  not  neces- 
sarily follow  from  this,  and  consequently  it  is  not  what  you  claim 
it  to  be — an  abstract  image.  Thus  it  is  surely  possible  to  form  the 
idea  of  man  in  general  which,  in  the  meaning  that  it  has  for  me,  is 


1  Introduction  to  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  §  12. 
1  Ibid.  §  15 

si.  e.    As  an  inflexible  quasi-entity  in   the  form  of  abstract  image,  having  no 
relation  to  the  particular  to  which  it  is  presumably  applicable. 
*  Introduction  to  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  §  15. 
J  v.  note  2,  p.  131  of  this  essay. 


—  13  — 

different  from  the  particular  fleeting  images  which  accompany  this 
abstract  idea;  and,  as  the  latter  has  for  me  this  universal  meaning, 
it  is  in  consciousness  a  something  distinct  from  the  particular.  To 
this  we  might,  in  behalf  of  Berkeley,  ask  in  reply:  Why  then  is  it 
not  the  case  that,  granted  the  same  premises,  we  march  straight  to 
the  same  conclusions?  If  we  differ  in  our  reasonings,  is  it  not 
because  we  differ  in  our  experiences,  and  because,  in  consequence, 
the  sensuous  images,  which  are  only  the  obverse  of  the  universals 
we  employ,  necessarily  have  something  to  do  with  our  conclusions? 
In  the  Commonplace  Book,  Berkeley  instructs  an  imaginary  reader 
as  follows:  "Let  him  not  regard  my  words  any  otherwise  than  as 
occasions  of  bringing  into  his  mind  determined  significations  .  .  . 
I  desire  and  warn  him  not  to  expect  to  find  truth  in  any  book  or 
anywhere  but  in  his  own  mind."  Our  assurance  of  truth,  he  seems 
to  imply,  is  in  the  correspondence  of  the  experiences  of  finite 
beings;  and  hence,  if  we  would  have  truth  we  must  not  neglect  the 
particular  sensuous  aspect  of  our  experience,  nor  yet  regard  it  as  a 
hinderance  to  the  universal  which  it  bears  within  it.  Not  that  we 
could  ever  attain  truth  by  means  of  particulars  which  have  no  uni- 
versal aspect,  though  every  idea  is  indeed  particular.  "If  we  will 
annex  a  meaning  to  our  words  and  speak  only  of  what  we  can  con- 
ceive, I  believe  we  shall  acknowledge  that  an  idea,  which,  consid- 
ered in  itself,  is  particular,  becomes  general  by  being  made  to 
represent  or  stand  for  all  other  particular  ideas  of  the  same  sort." 
The  idea,  then,  which  is  in  itself  definite  and  particular,  the 
image,  and  the  conglomerate  of  particular  experiences,  has  never- 
theless a  representative  character  in  which  may  be  seen  the 
evaluation  by  the  rational  consciousness  of  the  particulars  which 
the  image  is  taken  to  represent.  That  is,  we  are  confined  to  par- 
ticulars, Berkeley  says;  but  particulars,  at  least  some  of  them,  have 
a  universal  reference,  this  universal  reference  consisting  in  simply 
recognizing  that  the  general  idea  has  no  peculiarity  which  marks  it 
off  as  the  special  property  of  any  particular  idea.1  Thus  the  idea 
of  a  triangle  is  a  general  idea  or  notion,  not  "as  if  I  could  frame 
the  idea  of  a  triangle  which  is  neither  equilateral,  nor  scalenon,  nor 
equicrural;  but  only  that  the  particular  triangle  which  I  consider, 
whether  of  this  or  of  that  sort  it  matters  not,  doth  equally  stand 
for  and  represent  all  rectilinear  triangles  whatsoever,  and  is  in  that 
sense  universal."'2  • 

As  a  conclusion  of  the  matter  we  may,  I  think,  fairly  interpret 
Berkeley  as  follows:  In  our  thinking  we  are  confined  to  particu- 
lars i.  e.,  there  are  not  in  our  consciousness  universals  existing  as 
quasi-entities  over  against  a  number  of  particulars   different  from 

1  Cf .  later  discussions  of  the  notion;  also  note  2,  p. —  of  this  essay. 
*  Introduction  to  the  "Principles,"  §  15. 


—  14  — 

them  in  kind.  The  human  mind  is  of  the  nature  of  a  republic 
rather  than  of  a  monarchical  system.  .  On  the  other  hand,  the  par- 
ticularity of  the  idea  is  not  its  only  aspect;  for  the  universality  of 
certain  of  our  ideas  at  least  is  as  true  and  immediately  recogniz- 
able as  the  particularity  which  belongs  to  them  all.  If  this  is  a 
fair  interpretation  of  Berkeley,  as  we  read  this  doctrine  in  the 
Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  I  see  noth- 
ing that  can  justify  the  belief  that  he  assigns  a  prior  right  to  the 
particular  as  against  the  universal.  Rather  does  it  seem  to  be  a 
plea  for  the  equal  rights  of  the  universal  and  the  particular,  as  dis- 
tinguishable features  of  the  idea. 

But  the  importance  of  Berkeley's  defense  of  the  particular,  as 
against  the  asserted  existence  of  a  featureless  abstraction,  must 
not,  on  that  account,  be  minimized.  He  is  here  as  elsewhere  more 
often  the  champion  of  the  particular  than  of  the  universal;  and  the 
impetuosity  of  his  attack  upon  the  territory  usurped  by  his  oppon- 
ent doubtless  prevented  him  from  seeing  that  his  own  defenses 
were  hastily  constructed,  sufficient  for  the  occasion  only,  but  not 
of  a  character  to  withstand  the  carefully  planned  attacks  of  later 
thought.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  "his  defective  views  on  this 
subject  perplex  his  whole  philosophy."  Dr.  James  McCosh,  no 
very  friendly  critic,  says:  "he  rejects,  as  I  believe  he  ought, 
abstract  ideas,  in  the  sense  of  Locke,  that  is,  in  the  sense  of  im- 
ages of  qualities;  and  he  claims  it  is  his  merit  that  he   gets  rid   of 

grand  abstractions but,  while  he  has  exposed  the  errors 

of  Locke,  he  has  not  established  the  positive  truth Had 

he  taken  as  much  pains  in  unfolding  what  is  contained  in  '  consid- 
ering '  a  figure  as  triangular,  and  Peter  as  man,  without  consider- 
ing other  qualities,  and  what  is  involved  in  forming  general  propo- 
sitions and  reasoning  about  qualities,  as  he  has  taken  to  expel 
abstract  ideas  in  the  sense  of  phantasms,  he  would  have  saved  his 
own  philosophy,  and  philosophy  generally  from  his  day  to  this, 
from  an  immense  conglomeration  of  confusion."1  This  is  no 
doubt  true;  but  it  is  not  impossible  that  where,  as  in  the  case  of 
Berkeley's  philosophy,  it  is  admitted  on  all  sides  that  "an  immense 
conglomeration  of  confusion  "  exists,  a  part  of  the  confusion  may 
be  due  to  the  neglect  of  certain  strongly  marked  lines  of  thought 
in  favor  of  others  less  prominent  in  his  philosophy  as  a  whole,  but 
more  clearly  developed  at  certain  stages  of  its  progress.  As  Profes- 
sor Wenley  says:  "Like  Kant,  Berkeley  is  not  to  be  regarded  in  one 
aspect  of  his  work  only,  and  the  same  materials  which  viewed  in  a 
certain  aspect,  constitute  in  a  large  measure  his  value  for  philos- 
ophy should  perhaps  be  viewed  in  another  light,  if  we  are  to  be 
true  to  the  thought  of  the  founder  of  idealism  himself."2 

'McCosh:  ''Locke's  Theory  of  Knowledge  with  a  notice  of  Berkeley "  in 
■Criteria  of  Truth,  p.  57. 

2  "British  Thought  and    Modern   Speculation,"  in  Scottish  Review,  Vol.  19. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THINGS    AND    IDEAS. 

In  the  beginning  which  we  have  thus  made  in  our  attempted 
determination  of  the  general  Berkeleian  conception  of  the  world, 
his  view  of  abstract  ideas  has  been  given  the  first  place  as  the 
epistemological  moti£  of  that  idealistic  attitude  toward  Reality 
which  Berkeley  Inaugurated.  Partly  on  account  of  the  natural 
limitations  attaching  to  human  language,  partly  because  of  the 
negligence  of  metaphysicians,  who  do  not  always  verify  the  cor- 
respondence between  the  terms  which  they  employ,  and  definite 
concrete  thoughts,  without  which  words  are  mere  stumbling  blocks 
in  the  way  of  logical  thinking — it  has  come  about  that  a  kind  of 
spurious  currency  was  brought  into  circulation,  which  has  not 
been  without  its  effect  upon  the  metaphysics  of  the  past.  It  is 
Berkeley's  professed  task  to  recall  men  to  a  more  adequate  appre- 
ciation of  the  meanings  that  underlie  the  terms  by  which  they 
designate  supposed  existences.  "Nothing,"  says  he,  "seems  of 
more  importance  toward  erecting  a  firm  system  of  sound  and  real 
knowledge,  which  may  be  proof  against  the  assaults  of  scepticism 
than  to  lay  the  beginning  in  a  distinct  explication  of  what  is  meant 
by  thing,  reality,  existence,  for  in  vain  shall  we  dispute  concern- 
ing the  '  real  existence  '  of  things,  or  pretend  to  any  knowledge 
thereof,  so  long  as  we  have  not  fixed  the  meaning  of  those  words."1 

In  this  enquiry  with  which  Berkeley  sets  out  there  may  be 
found  at  least  some  feeble  anticipation  of  that  later  "  voyage  of 
discovery  "  which  was  to  tax  the  energies  of  a  mightier  intellect 
than  his  own.  "'Tis  on  the  meaning  and  import  of  existence  that 
I  chiefly  insist."  The  metaphysical  question:  what  is  Reality? 
Berkeley  is  the  first  to  raise  explicitly  in  the  form,  what  is  the 
meaning  of  Reality  or  rather,  we  may  say,  what  assignable  mean- 
ing can  we  give  to  that  which  we  call  Reality,  i.  e.  by  what  ideas 
can  we  designate  the  Real  ?  The  solution  of  this  problem  is  partly 
foreshadowed  in  the  very  manner  of  stating  the  question  itself. 
The  Real  must  at  least  fulfill  the  negative  condition  of  not  being 
that  which  cannot  be  expressed  or  in  some  way  verified  in  ideas. 
But  then  what  are  ideas  ? 

For  answer  Berkeley  unquestioningly  sets  out  from  the  Car- 
tesian separation  of  thought  and  existence,  idea  and  thing.  Re- 
ality was  virtually  comprehended  under  these  two  categories,  and 

1  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  §  S9. 


—  1(5  — 

as  the  Lockian  psychological  theory  of  knowledge  progressed  it 
became  more  and  more  evident  that  these  two  heterogeneous  quid- 
dities would  never  fulfill  the  requirement  of  explaining  one  another, 
which  had  been  implied  in  the  assertion  of  their  mutual  relation. 
There  was  needed  a  bold  stroke  which  would  at  once  destroy  the 
independence  of  thought  or  substance.  The  violent  disruption  of 
these  two  existents  effected  by  Decartes  must  be  succeeded  by  the 
summary  relegation  of  one  or  the  other  to  the  rank  of  dependent 
existence.  And  there  was  no  question  as  to  which  should  ulti- 
mately yield  precedence  to  the  other.  The  unknown  must  ever 
derive  its  explanation  from  the  known.  Knowledge  had  been  de- 
fined by  Locke  as  the  preception  of  the  connexion  and  agreement 
or  disagreement  and  repugnancy  between  our  ideas.  It  only 
remained  to  discover  whether  or  not  ideas  alone,  and  the  knowl- 
edge we  have  by  means  of  them,  are  in  harmony  with  the  ordinary 
preceptions  of  life  and  that  partially  organized  system  of  truth  of 
which  we  are  made  aware  in  the  knowledge  of  the  several  sciences. 
An  affirmative  answer  to  this  question  would  mean  that  ideas, 
hitherto  conceived  as  subjective  merely,  and  thus  in  separation 
from  an  unknown  substance,  must  declare  their  adequacy  to  fulfill 
all  the  conditions  of  objectivity  required  by  the  scientific  and 
ordinary  naive  consciousness.  The  objectivity  of  the  idea  once 
established,  as  idea  it  would  yet  retain  its  essential  relatedness  t-j 
the  percipient  and  cognitive  consciousness,  and  thus  maintain  its 
position  as  an  element  in  a  system  of  conscious  experiences.  Carte- 
sian substance  could  thus  be  banished  to  the  limbo  of  useless 
metaphysical  abstractions. 

The  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  desired  consummation  which 
presented  themselves  to  Berkeley  were,  in  the  first  place,  the  preju- 
dices of  mankind,  and  second,  the  semblance  of  agreement  between 
substance  and  ideas,  which  still  remained  in  the  Lockian  epistem- 
ology  as  the  formal  assertion  of  a  correspondence  between  ideas, 
and  the  primary  qualities  of  things. 

With  regard  to  the  first  difficulty,  the  long  established  prepos- 
sessions of  men  in  favor  of  unthinking  substance  would  naturally 
render  them  unfavorably  disposed  toward  an  abrupt  reversal  of 
their  customary  ways  of  thinking.  Thus,  until  they  could  be 
brought  to  see  that  true  objectivity  does  not  necessarily  imply  the 
existence  of  an  unknown  or  unknowable  substance,  and  that  ideas 
do  not  of  necessity  mean  floating  fancies  and  mere  subjective  crea- 
tions of  the  mind,  prejudice  must  be  overcome  by  a  review  of  the 
practical  benefits  conferred  upon  mankind  by  the  Berkeleian  "new 
discovery."  Now,  the  extreme  materialism  of  Hobbes  and  Gas- 
sendi,  and  the  tendency  towards  the  complete  mechanical  inter- 
pretation of  everything,  prevalent  at  the  time  of  Berkeley,  which, 
as  b£  declares,  is.  foreign  t&  his  nature,  together  with  his  own  pious. 


—  17  — 

inclinations,  brought  it  about  that  practical  benefits  were  for  him, 
in  large  part,  synonymous  with  theological  benefits.  The  result  was 
that  Berkeley  fought  the  battle  of  Immaterialism  with  the  Essay  of 
Locke  in  one  hand  and  the  weapons  of  adeistic  theology  in  the  other. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  as  we  have  said,  Locke's  emphasis 
upon  the  ideal  character  of  existence  ill  served  to  maintain  a  union 
between  the  primary  qualities  of  substance  and  their  ideal  counter- 
parts in  the  mind.  The  'secondary  qualities'  had  already  taken 
their  places  in  the  ideal,  which  was  also  the  knowable,  system  of 
experiences.  Color,  sound,  heat,  etc.,  many  of  the  'ideas' 
which  go  to  make  up  the  world  of  which  we  have  actual  experience, 
had  already  been  declared  subjective.  The  'primary  qualities,' 
five  in  number,  extension,  motion  or  rest,  figure  and  number, 
together  with  impenetrability  or  solidity,  were  also  'ideas;' 
although  supposedly  the  conscious  effects  of  unknown  coexistent 
causes.  The  only  inlets  into  the  "dark  chamber  of  the  under- 
standing" were  the  senses;  yet  so  far  as  concerned  real  knowledge 
of  the  world  beyond  consciousness,  the  senses  were  closed  doors. 
The  charge  of  subjective  idealism  would  have  been  preferred 
against  Locke  had  not  Berkeley's  own  doctrine  been  at  hand.1 

The  only  egress  from  subjectivity  lay  in  the  recognition  that 
all  ideas  of  sense  may,  in  one  aspect,  be  viewed  as  subjective; 
while,  in  another  aspect,  it  is  equally  true  that  they  may  be 
regarded  as  objective;  and  it  is  only  in  this  way  that  objectivity  of 
system,  that  is,  rational  knowledge,  can  declare  itself.  Thus  we 
may,  I  think,  understand  Berkeley  to  say:  If  you  have  regard  to 
an  unthinking  'matter'  or  'substance,'  unknown  or  unknowable, 
independent  of  mind,  I  maintain  that,  in  such  a  reference,  ideas 
are  subjective,  mind-related  things  beyond  which  you  cannot  pass 
to  supposed  existences  different  from  conscious  facts.  But  if  by 
'objective'  you  mean  the  system  of  factual  experience  which  we 
term  the  objective  world,  it  is  in  that  case  the  objectivity  of  the 
idea  for  which  I  contend;  and  furthermore,  "I  make  extension, 
color,  etc.,  to  exist  really  in  bodies  independent  of  our  mind." 
"You  mistake  me,"  he  says  in  his  third  dialogue  between  Hylas 
and  Philonous,  "I  am  not  for  changing  things  into  ideas,  but 
rather  ideas  into  things." 

Primary  qualities  are  then  to  he  deposed  from  the  position  xif 
independent  existences  and  are  tfl  rank  now  with  secondary  quali- 
ties. But  how  effect  this?  They  are  useless  assumptions,  for, 
just  as.  sound  and  color  (subjective  appearances)  seem  .to  b^  essen- 

1For  Locke's  own  approach  to  an  idealistic  position,  Cf.  e.  g.  T.  H.  Webb; 
Veil  of  Isis,  passage  above  quoted,  pp.  12-13.  Also  Locke's  Essay:  Bk.  IV.,  Ch. 
II.,  14;  Bk.  IV.,  Ch.  XL,  1;  Bk.  IV.,  Ch.  XL,  3;  IV.,  XI.,8(Cit.  in  "  Veil  of  Isis"). 


—  18  — 

tially  coexistent  with  the  other  objective  aspects  of  our  world  of 
experience,  so  do  the  ideal  counterparts  of  the  primary  qualities 
equally  well  fill  up  the  manifold  of  objective  experiences.  Only 
the  bare  assertion  remains  that,  corresponding  to  these  ideal  quali- 
ties, are  their  originals,  presumably  more  real  than  they;  the 
former  being,  as  it  were,  photographs  of  the  latter,  shot  into  the 
mind,  and  preserving  in  some  miraculous  fashion  the  pristine 
beauty  and  truth  belonging  to  the  originals.  But  wherein  lies  the 
difference  between  these  and  the  secondary;  and  why  are  not  these 
latter  also  supposed  to  inhere  in  an  unknown  something  beyond 
consciousness? 

Now  the  primary  qualities  in  their  ideational  character  are 
referred  to  powers,  secondary  qualities  to  combinations  of  powers 
in  an  unknown  substance.  Accordingly  the  latter,  although 
denominated  by  Locke  'simple  ideas,'  or  simple  elements  of 
knowledge,  are  nevertheless,  with  reference  to  their  origin  in 
unknown  combinations  of  'powers,'  complex;  and  it  is  because 
of  their  complexity  that  this  class  of  ideas  possess  that  distinctively 
ideal  character  which  seems  to  belong-  to  them  and  not  to  the 
'  primary  qualities.'  But  how  do  we  attain  a  knowledge  of  their 
complexity?  By  the  introspection  of  conscious  contents,  of  course, 
together  with  observation  of  the  conditions  under  which  we  intro- 
spect; from  which  it  appears  e.  g.  that  what  is  hot  to  one  hand  is 
cold  to  the  other,  or  what  is  sweet  to  one  palate  may  be  bitter  to 
another — requisite  conditions  being  given.  Thus  you  may  refer 
secondary  qualities  to  unknown  combinations  of  powers,  resident 
in  one  unknown  substance  if  you  will;  but  the  real  complexity  of 
so-called  mental  elements  is  your  test,  and  the  condition  under 
which  your  judgment  is  made,  is  relativity  of  the  idea  to  the  per- 
cipient organism.  The  complexity  of  the  experienced  mental  contents 
is  then  the  equivalent  of  their  condemnation  to  rank  also  as  inde- 
pendent entities  by  means  of  objective  counterparts;  and  conversely, 
simplicity  means  the  guarantee  of  their  right  so  to  exist.  We  have 
thus  a  sufficient  criterion  by  which  to  judge  of  the  validity  of 
Locke's  claim  in  behalf  of  primary  qualities;  and  it  is  this  task 
which  Berkeley  sets  for  himself  in  the  Theory  of  Vision,  though  by 
no  means  attempting  an  exhaustive  analysis  of  this  class  of  ideas. 

I. — IDEA    AS    MERE    SENSATION. 

Berkeley  now  proposes  to  turn  the  tables,  and  subject  primary 
qualities  also  to  the  test  of  experience  which,  as  we  shall  see, 
involves  a  reference  of  primary  to  secondary  qualities.  He  wishes 
to  test  the  less  definitely  known  by  the  more  completely  known, 
rather  than,  with  Locke,  to  refer  the  more  definitely  known  to  the 
more  hypothetical.  In  the  Theory  of  Vision  the  analysis  of  that 
class  of  ideas  which  have  hitherto  been  regarded  as  simple  elements 


—  19  — 

of  consciousness  is  undertaken  with  reference  to  Sight  and  Touch 
only,  although  the  essay  undoubtedly  implies  far  more  than  that 
which  is  explicitly  set  forth  as  the  design  of  the  author,  which  is: 
"  to  show  the  manner  wherein  we  perceive  by  sight  the  Distance, 
Magnitude  and  Situation  of  objects;  also  to  consider  the  difference 
there  is  betwixt  the  ideas  of  Sight  and  Touch  and  whether  there  be 
any  idea  common  to  both  senses."1 

In  the  second  book  of  the  essay,  Locke  had  shown  that  "we 
get  the  idea  of  space,  both  by  our  sight  and  touch,"  which,  says 
he,  "is  so  evident,  that  it  would  be  as  needless  to  go  to  prove  that 
men  perceive,  by  their  sight,  a  distance  between  bodies  of  different 
colors,  or  between  the  parts  of  the  same  body,  as  that  they  see 
colors  themselves."2  "This  space,  considered  barely  in  length 
between  any  two  beings,  without  considering  anything  else  between 
them  is  called  distance."3  Now  it  was  the  current  theory,  to  which 
Locke  gave  countenance,  that  the  spatial  determination,  distance 
is  perceivable  by  the  sense  or  sight  regardless  of  the  way  in  which 
it  is  perceived  by  touch,  against  which  the  first  argument  in  the 
Theory  of  Vision  was  raised.  The  initial  assumption  underlying 
the  series  Of  arguments  with  respect  to  distance,  is  the  common 
agreement  that  "Distance  of  itself,  and  immediately,  cannot  be 
see_n.~  Distance  not  being  immediately  perceivable  by  sight  and 
yet  being  perceived,  it  follows  that  it  is  "brought  into  view  by 
means  of  some  other  idea,  that  is  itself  immediately  perceived  in 
the  act  of  vision."4  These  other  ideas  are  then  merely  'signs'  or 
suggestions  by  which  distance  is  introduced  into  the  mind  as  a 
conscious  percept  or  idea.  Against  the  view  that  the  mind  by  a 
kind  of  natural  geometry  immediately  perceives  distance  by  the 
mathematical  judgment  of  lines  and  angles;  and  also  against 
another  opinion  held  by  writers  on  optics  to  the  effect  that  the  eye 
judges  distance  by  the  greater  or  less  divergence  of  the_ra^s_trans- 
mitted  from  the  object,  Berkeley  urges  objections  which  may  be 
briefly  stated  as  follows:  (i)  There  are  no  such  mathematical  per- 
ceptions, for  introspection  does  not  reveal  a  process  of  computa- 
tion or  comparison  of  lines  and  angles.  (2)  Lines  and  angles, 
being  merely  mathematical  hypotheses,  are  not  objectively  existent. 
(3)  If  the  foregoing  mathematical  judgments  were  involved  in  our 
preception  of  distance,  they  would  yet  be  insufficient  of  themselves 
to  explain  the  phenomena  we  are  considering.  For  the  idea  of 
distance  being  mediated  by  other  ideas    we  must  necessarily  have 

1  Theory  of  Vision,  Jj  31. 

2  Locke's  Essay;  Bk.  H,  Ch.  xiii,  §  2. 
3Ibid.  §  3. 

*  Theory  of  Vision  §  2. 
5Ibid.  §  n. 


—  20  — 

some  regard  to  the  latter  in  determining  the  composition  of  our 
perception  of  distance.  Thus  introspection  will  show  us  that  ideas, 
or  sensations  as  we  might  now  call  them,  produced  by  the  muscu- 
lar movement  of  the  eyeball,  accompany  the  accommodation  of 
the  eye  for  nearer  or  more  remote  vision. 

Again  with  regard  to  the  phenomena  of  accommodation, 
Berkeley  tells  us  that  the  perception  of  distance  is  aided  by  the 
"strain  sensations "  with  which  we  correct  the  confused  appear- 
ance of  objects  brought  too  near  the  eye.  But  besides  these  mus- 
cia  sensations  or  'visual  ideas'  or  'signs'  accompanying  the 
employment  of  the  '  visive  faculty,'  there  are  also  visible  signs, 
such  as  the  particular  number,  size,  kind,  etc  ,  of  the  things  seen; 
and  all  these  are  of  use  to  us  in  the  determination  of  distance. 
From  the  foregoing  we  may  conclude,  that  a  man  born  blind  would, 
if  he  were  subsequently  enabled  to  see,  receive  an  entirely  new  set 
of  sensations,  which  would  be  mere  mind-related  symbols,  but 
meaningless,  until  their  significance  was  learned  by  means  of  asso' 
ciating  them  with  those  sensations  earlier  formed  in  his  experience. 
Now  color,  Berkeley  is  ready  to  assume,  is  the  proper  and  imme- 
diate object  of  sight,  and  this,  being  a  secondary  quality,  is  not 
without  the  mind;  whereas  'outness'  or  independence  of  the 
mind  is  ascribed  to  extension,  figure,  and  motion.  But  extension  is 
inseparable  from  color,  and  where  extension  is  there  too  is  figure 
and  also  motion.  In  proof  of  this,  we  have  the  experience  that 
the  appearance  of  an  object  alters  with  its  proximity  to  or  distance 
from  the  observer,  this  difference  displaying  itself  in  the  degree  of 
faintness  of  color  and  outline. 

The  conclusion  now  is  that  the  strictly  visual  sensations,  col- 
ors, refer  us  to  tactual  sensations,  sensations  of  muscular  effort 
experienced  in  the  resistance  which  bodies  offer  to  us,  sensations 
of  bodily  movement  and  of  the  movement  of  bodily  organs,  and 
lastly,  sensations  of  muscular  effort  experienced  in  going  to  the 
distant  object.  •'  Ideas  of  space,  outness,  and  things  placed  at  a 
distance  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  the  objects  of  the  sight;  they  are 
no  otherwise  perceived  by  the  eye  than  by  the  ear."1  But  it  has 
come  about  in  our  experience  that  ideas  of  hearing  are  more  easily 
separable  from  ideas  of  touch  than  are  those  of  sight.  We  hear 
the  footfall  of  a  man  walking  upon  the  street  and  we  readily  recog- 
nize the  ideal  character  of  the  experienced  sound;  but  it  is  a  more 
difficult  matter  to  realize  that  the  man  whom  we  see  arouses  a 
totally  different  class  of  sensations  from  the  man  whom  we  touch. 
Yet  it  is  nevertheless  true  that,  just  as  familiar  words  immediately 
arouse  in  our  minds  meanings  far  different  from  the  sounds  which 
are  also  conveyed,  but  of  which  we  are  scarcely  aware,  "so  like- 

1  Theory  of   Vision  §  46. 


—  21  — 

wise  the  secondary  objects,  or  those  which  are  only  suggested  by 
sight,  do  often  more  strongly  affect  us,  and  are  more  regarded, 
than  the  proper  objects  of  that  sense."  ' 

As  in  the  case  of  Distance,  we  find  that  Magnitude  also  is  not 
immediate  but  suggested.  The  'lines  and  angles'  argument  is 
reasserted  to  prove  the  immediacy  of  our  preception  of  magnitude 
by  Sight  independently  of  the  sense  of  Touch;  but,  again,  recourse 
to  introspection  declares  the  experiential  nature  of  judgments  of 
this  kind.  The  magnitude  of  the  visible  object  constantly  changes 
with  change  of  distance  between  the  real  object  and  the  observer; 
therefore,  when  we  speak  of  the  magnitude  or  size  of  a  thing,  it 
must  be  that  we  have  reference  to  a  more  stable,  tangible,  magni- 
tude.2 Again  with  regard  to  the  Measurement  of  Magnitudes,  the 
essentially  relative  and  inconstant  nature  of  visible  Magnitude  at 
once  declares  its  utility  as  a  standard.  It  is  not  the  merely  visible 
foot  or  visible  yard  that  we  adopt  as  the  unit  of  linear  measure- 
ment for  these  appear  of  different  lengths  according  to  their  dis- 
tance from  the  eye;  but  it  is  rather  a  constant  and  invariable,  tan- 
gible, magnitude  to  which  we  appeal.  In  further  support  of  Berke- 
ley's contention  that  Magnitude  is  perceived  in  the  same  manner 
as  Distance,  we  are  reminded  that  "what  we  immediately  and 
properly  see  are  only  lights  and  colors  in  sundry  situations  and 
shades,  and  degrees  of  faintness  and  clearness,  confusion  and  dis- 
tinctness."3 

The  heterogeniety  of  the  ideas  of  Sight  and  Touch  is  further 
shown  by  an  analysis  of  what  is  contained  in  the  ideas  of  Position 
or  Situation.  Experience  teaches  us  that  certain  ideas  of  touch 
go  with  certain  other  ideas  of  'visible'  things,  and  that,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  latter,  an  instantaneous  and  true  estimate  of  the 
situation  of  outward  tangible  objects  is  made.  These  two  classes 
of  ideas  are  two  entirely  different  kinds  of  experience.  "That 
which  I  see  is  only  variety  of  light  and  colors.  That  which  I  feel 
is  hard  or  soft,  hot  or  cold,  rough  or  smooth.  What  similitude, 
what  connexion,  have  those  ideas  with  these  ?  "  But  some  have 
nevertheless  asserted  the  imposibility  of  thus  divorcing  visible  and 
tangible  ideas,  urging  as  a  reason  the  numerical  identity  of  the 
objects  of  these  senses  and  the  equality  of  the  number  as  given 
immediately   in   the   visual  idea.      To   this   Berkeley   replies   that 

Ubid,  §51. 

2  Note:  Throughout  the  essay,  tangible  magnitude,  tangible  idea,  tangible 
object,  etc..  mean  for  Berkeley  real  magnitude,  real  idea,  real  object.  At  this 
juncture  Berkeley  enlightens  us  somewhat  vviih  regard  to  his  apparent  use  of 
"  tangible  ideas"  as  the  ultimate  sense  data.  The  reason  here  given  is  the  evi- 
dent utility  of  such  sensations  for  the  perservation  of  the  bodily  organism,  "they 
are  adapted  to  benefit  or  injure  our  bodies,  and  thereby  produce  in  our  minds  the 
sensations  of  pleasure  or  pain."     Cf.  §  on  Suggestion, 

3  "Theory  of  Vision,"  §  77, 


—  22  — 

number  also  is  a  "creature. of  the  mind"1  nothing  fixed  and  set- 
tled, really  existing  in  things  themselves;  whatever  the  mind 
chooses  to  regard  as  one  is  a  unit,  and  the  same  thing  from  another 
point  of  view  may  be  a  manifold.  "We  must  learn  the  applicability 
of  number  to  visible  as  well  as  to  tangible  ideas.  The  confusion 
between  these  two  kinds  of  ideas  has  led  to  the  above  mentioned 
difficulty  about  objects  being  painted  inverted  upon  the  retina  yet 
seen  upright;  for,  relatively  to  the  visible  earth,  the  position  of 
the  retinal  object  is  correctly  depicted,  and  relatively  to  the  tan- 
gible earth,  that  with  which  we  are  concerned  is  only  the  outward 
tangible  object. 

The  conclusion  with  regard  to  Distance,  Magnitude  and  SituV" 
ation,  warrants  us  in  affirming  the  following  proposition:  "The 
extension,  figures,  and  motions  perceived  by  sight  are  specifically 
distinct  from  the  idea  of  touch,  called  by  the  same  name;  nor  is 
there  any  such  thing  as  one  idea,  or  kind  of  idea,  common  to  both 
senses."2  There  is  no  idea  common  to  both  these  senses,  because 
ideas  of  light  and  color,  being  the  only  immediate  objects  of  sight, 
are  specifically  distinct  from  ideas  of  touch,  and  in  consequence, 
Space,  Distance,  Magnitude,  Extension  and  Motion3  are  suggested 
mediate  ideas. 

But  if  Sight  and  Touch  yield  us  two  entirely  different  sets  of 
ideas,  why  do  we  denote  by  the  same  name  these  groupings  of  dif- 
ferent ideas  ?  Furthermore,  why  are  these  ideas  so  mingled  to- 
gether in  our  experience  as  to  seem  inseparable  ?  The  answer  to 
both  these  questionsjs:  In  the  course  of  our  experience  it  has 
come  about  that  Visible  and  Tangible  ideas  have  been  constantly 
associated  together  so  that  one  has  become  the  mark  or  sign  of 
the  other.  Thus  a  visible  square  suggests  a  tangible  square 
because,  having  learned  the  applicability  of  number  to  both  sets  of 
ideas,  we  see  that  one  resembles  the  other  in  having  a  correspond- 
ing number  of  parts  or  marks.  But  this  'sign  language'  whereby 
visible  ideas  suggest  tangible  ideas,  has  been  learned  early  in  our 
experience;  and  there  has  thus  resulted  the  constant  confusion 
between  them.  The  perception  of  an  external  world  is  apparently 
immediate,  experience  having  brought  about  such  facility  in  the 
interpretation  of  signs;  but  because  of  this,  we  are  led  to  the 
wrong  inference  that  this  immediateness  is  due  to  the  sense  of 
sight  alone,  whereas  by  that  sense  we  are  made  aware  of  colors 
only,  in  'varying  degrees  of  light  and  shade. 

It  is  now  time  to  enquire  more  particularly  into  the  nature  of 

1  "  Principles,"  §  12. 
^-2"Theory  of  Vision,"  §  127. 

3 Not?.:  That  visible  and  tangible  motion  have  nothing  in  common  follows 
as  a  corollary  from  the  difference  between  visible  and  tangible  extension — vide  § 
137.     "  Theory  of  Vision." 


a 


—  23  — 

the  Berkelian  idea  as  set  forth  in  the  preceding  sections  of  the 
Theory  of  Vision.  On  the  way  to  this  we  may  note  the  definition 
that  occurs  in  §  45  of  the  Essay  in  which  it  is  said:  "I  take  the 
word  idea  for  any  immediate  object  of  sense  or  understanding 
— in  which  large  signification  it  is  commonly  used  by  the  mod- 
erns." This  statement,  however,  is  made  with  reference  to  "tang- 
ible ideas  "  only.  In  its  scope  it  is  equivalent  to  the  Lockian  idea 
and  also  to  Berkeley's  ordinary  use  of  the  term.  As  so  extended, 
it  has  not  properly  been  the  object  of  our  consideration.  It  is 
true  that  the  above  definition  is  inclusive  of  the  narrower  meaning, 
in  which  the  word  'idea'  has  been  used  throughout  the  Theory  of 
Vision,  but  it  is  with  this  restricted  use  that  we  are  here  concerned. 

And  I  think  it  cannot  fail  to  be  readily  understood  from  the 
foregoing  brief  consideration  of  the  essay  that  'idea  'is  throughout 
used  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  mere  sensation.  The  proper 
objects  of  sight  are  colors,  just  as  the  proper  objects  of  hearing 
are  sounds,  but  in  the  perception  of  any  external  object  there  is 
more  involved  than  the  mere  sense-presentation  of  color.  The 
object  presented  in  perception  possesses  'outness,'  extension  and 
figure,  is,  in  short,  externalized  in  space  in  a  way  that  cannot  be 
accounted  for  by  reference  to  the  mere  data  of  sight  alone.  The 
true  object  of  perception  is  therefore  mediately  constituted  by 
means  of  these  visual  data,  which  serve  as  signs  or  suggestions  of 
tactual  and  muscular  sensations,  to  which  the  last  appeal  is  made. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  true  object  of  sight  is  a  mere  mind-depend- 
ent sensation,  colors — our  sole  visual  data — being  admittedly  only 
in  the  mind.  Extension,  figure  and  motion,  three  of  Locke's  pri- 
mary qualities,  are  so  far  as  concerns  their  reference  to  the  visual 
faculty,  reduced  to  a  condition  of  mind-dependency — a  result 
which  Berkeley  practically  achieves  here  in  the  Theory  of  Vision. 
Number,  another  of  Locke's  primary  qualities,  has  also  been  de- 
clared a  creature  of  the  mind.  With  the  disposal  of  figure,  exten- 
sion and  distance  in  space,  the  perception  of  solidity,  by  means  of 
the  visual  faculty  alone,  is  declared  impossible.  But  the  primary 
qualities  nevertheless  reappear  in  another  form,  for  tangible  exten- 
sion, magnitude,  figure,  etc.,  yet  remain.  It  is  true  they  are  de- 
nominated "tangible  ideas";  and  are  regarded  as  subjective,  sen- 
sations, as  in  the  case  of  "visual  ideas";  but  for  all  that  they  are 
looked  upon  as  ultimate  data,  beyond  which  we  cannot  pass.  The; 
externality  of  the  world  remains  for  us  an  irreducible  fact,  as  far 
as  the  Theory  of  Vision  is  concerned;  and  visual  ideas  are  related) 
to  tangible  ideas  as  signs  to  the  thing  signified. 

But  though  we  may  as  yet  determine  nothing  further  with 
regard  to  tangible  ideas,  it  is  possible  that  additional  light  may  be 
thrown  upon  the  Berkelian  conception  of  visual  ideas.  We  have 
seen  that,   throughout  the   essay,  idea  isjsynonymous  with  sensa- 


—  24  — 

tion;  but  in  what  acceptation  shall  we  take  this  equivalent  term — 
sensation  ?  Is  it  a  recognized  conscious  content;  or  is  it  an  unre- 
cognized and  subconscious  datum  ?  Although  here  as  elsewhere 
Berkeley's  theory  of  knowledge  is  undeveloped  and  fragmentary, 
we  may,  I  think,  find  a  justification  for  holding  to  the  latter  of  the 
two  constructions  indicated  as  possible.  For,  in  the  first  place, 
idea,  we  have  been  told,  may  have  another  function  than  that  of 
arousing  its  precise  equivalent  in  consciousness.  Thus,  the  sen- 
sation of  color  may  suggest  other  sensations;  though  color  may 
not  be  consciously  recognized  as  present  in  the  percept.  Again, 
our  visual  sensations  have,  in  the  upbuilding  of  our  conscious  ex- 
perience, become  so  inextrically  interwoven  with  their  suggested 
tangible  sensations,  that  it  is  only  by  attention  to  the  physiologi- 
cal processes  underlying  the  phenomena  of  vision  that  we  can  ob- 
tain a  just  estimate  of  what  may  be  attributed  to  the  functioning 
of  that  'faculty'  alone.  But  we  never  perceive  mere  colors,  i.  e. , 
mere  visual  sensations;  or  'ideas';  for  what  in  our  perception  we 
are  actually  conscious  of  are  colors  extended,  figured,  etc.  Visual 
sensations,  then,  although  necessary  to  the  explanation  of  the 
growth  of  our  experience  by  means  of  their  association  with  other 
sensations,  are  strictly  not  perceived.  This  is  the  conclusion 
reached  in  the  Vindication  of  Theory  of  Vision1  in  which  we  are 
told  that  the  colored  point  "  projected  in  the  fund"  of  the  eye  is 
unperceived.  It  is  "tangible  and  apprehended  only  by  imagina- 
tion "  i.  e.,  it  is  a  sign  or  'suggestion'  of  other  ideas  with  which 
our  knowledge  of  the  outer  world  seems  more  intimately  con- 
cerned. 

II IDEA    AS    PERCEPT. 

The  Theory  of  Vision  to  which  we  have  referred  in  order  to 
obtain  Berkeley's  earliest  acceptation  of  'idea'  was,  as  Fraser 
says,  the  "opening  wedge  "  which  served  to  introduce  the  doc- 
trine of  Immaterialism  as  set  forth  in  the  Principles  of  Human 
Knowledge.  Little  fault  has  been  found  with  Berkeley  for  having 
left  so  much  of  the  work  of  associational  psychology  to  be  per- 
formed by  his  successors;  yet  during  the  year  which  elapsed  be- 
tween the  publication  of  the  Theory  of  Vision  and  the  appearance 
of  the  Principles,  we  must  assume  that  the  work  of  associational 
psychology  had  considerably  advanced.  So  far  as  concerned  the 
Essay,  we  were  left  with  the  literal  fact  of  tangible  sensations,  as 
ultimate  sense  criteria  of  objectivity.  But  the  notion  that  tangi- 
ble sensations  are  really  more  ultimate  than  any  other  we  must  now 
suppose  to  be  a  'vulgar  error,'  which  it  was  not  Berkeley's  pur- 

1  "Theory  of  Vision  Further  Indicated  and  Explained,''  §  50;  Fraser's  note 
to  §  3,  "Theory  of  Vision,"  p.  168  of  "Selections." 


—  25  — 

pose  to  examine  and  refute  in  a  discourse  concerning  Vision.  The 
latter  is  merely  an  experiment,  pursued  a  little  way  for  the  purpose 
of  satisfying  himself  with  his  new  conception  of  objective  exist- 
ence, and  further  investigation  along  that  line  is  no  longer  of  para- 
mount interest  to  him. 

We  are  accordingly  invited  to  take  a  fresh  start  with  sensa- 
tions, as  it  were*,  all  on  the  same  level.  Analysis  of  the  meaning 
of  supposed  objective,  mind-independent  qualities  (so  far  as  we 
were  concerned  with  them  in  the  Theory  of  Vision)  has  every- 
where revealed  their  essentially  composite  character,  and  each  one 
of  those  units  into  which  they  resolve  themselves  declares  itself  in 
consciousness  as  mind-dependent,  a  sensation.  In  short,  when  we 
look  to  the  meaning  of  objective  existence  in  any  of  its  particular 
qualities,  a  sensation,  in  conjunction  with  some  other  sensation, 
offers  itself  to  us  as  the  readiest  and  most  complete  explanation  of 
the  quality.  It  seems  we  must  conclude  that  all  we  have  are  these 
ideas  or  sensations.  In  sensation,  we  have  apparently  come  in 
touch  with  Reality.  We  have  now  a  fairly  complete  psychological 
theory  of  knowledge;  and  we  wish  to  discover  the  extent  of  its  use- 
fulness in  metaphysic.  We  are  no  longer  concerned  with  the 
question  of  whether  qualities  of  the  object  may  be  explained  in 
terms  of  sensation,  but  whether  the  object  itself,  in  all  the  ways  in  J 
which  it  appeals  to  our  sense-perception  and  cognitive  conscious- 
ness, may  be  accounted  for  by  means  of  the  same  sensations. 

Now,  with  regard  to  the  object,  there  is  the  commonly  ac- 
cepted opinion  that  by  it  we  denote  an  existent  which  has  a  pecu- 
liar reality  of  its  own,  distinct  from  its  being  perceived.  But  if  we 
attempt  to  describe  any  natural  object  apart  from  its  relation  to 
others,  we  can  only  describe  it  as  it  affects  us;  i.  e. ,  each  special 
determination  of  the  object  is  seen  to  be  some  one  or  other  of 
the  special  revelations  of  sense.  "  The  table  I  write  on  I  say 
exists,  that  is,  I  see  and  feel  it;  furthermore  if  I  were  out  of  my 
study  I  should  say  it  existed — meaning  thereby  that  if  I  was  in  my 
study  I  might  perceive  it,  or  that  some  other  spirit  actually  does 
perceive  it."  What  more  can  be  said  of  the  existence  of  an  object 
than  this  ?  The  object  is  a  mere  plexus  of  sensations,  "and  as 
several  of  these  are  observed  to  accompany  each  other,  they  come; 
to  be  marked  by  one  name  and  so  to  be  reputed  as  one  Thing." 
These  clusters  of  sensations  give  to  us  all  the  meaning  that  is  con- 
tained in  the  'existence'  of  the  Thing.  Beyond  the  Thing,  as  so 
constituted,  there  is  nothing.  Some  indeed,  on  the  basis  of  a 
distinction  between  the  above  mentioned  primary  and  secondary 
qualities,  assert  the  existence  of  an  object  independent  of  sense 
perceptions;  but  this  can  be  no  longer  maintained,  if,  as  will  be 
seen  by  reference  to  the  Theory  of  Vision,  primary  maybe  equated 
with  secondary  qualities.     And  after  all,  "it  is   but   looking  into 


—  26  — 

your  own  thoughts,  and  so  trying  whether  you  can  conceive  it  pos- 
sible for  a  sound,  or  figure,  or  motion,  or  color,  to  exist  without 
the  mind  or  unperceived."1  Ideas  cannot  then  be  taken  in  any 
sense  as  copies  of  external  things,  for  the  external  thing  and  the 
idea  would  of  necessity  be  identical.  If  the  orginals  are  perceived 
they  are  ideas;  if  unperceived,  then  that  which  is  perceived  is  identi- 
cal with  that  which  is  unperceived — a  manifest  contradiction. 

Thus  far  with  regard  to  the  ordinary  common  sense  distinc- 
tion between  thing  and  idea,  as  also  the  further  distinction  between 
object  and  percipient  consciousness  by  means  of  supposed  quali- 
ties inherent  in  the  former.  But  in  addition  to  the  foregoing  ways 
of  conceiving  the  object,  philosophers  have  asserted  the  existence 
of  'matter'  variously  regarded  as  'substratum,'  'occasion,' 
'substance,'  to  which  the  knowledge  of  our  ideas  and  their  rela- 
tions to  them,  admittedly  ideal,  is  ultimately  to  be  referred.  Now, 
aside  from  the  uselessness  of  such  a  conception  for  purposes  of 
explaining  our  experience,  matter  in  this  sense  is  in  itself  contra- 
dictory; for  either  it  is  something  out  of  all  relation  to  ideas,  in 
which  case  it  is  unknowable  and  even  its  existence  cannot  be 
asserted,  or  else  it  is  the  things  which  we  see  and  touch  and  handle, 
and  thus  a  complex  of  sensations.  If  we  are  careful  always  to  use 
words  in  their  proper  significations,  that  is,  if  we  admit  no  term 
for  which  we  cannot  discover  a  definite  mental  equivalent,  it  is 
plain  that  we  must  reject  the  materialistic  hypothesis  of  an  "inert, 
senseless,  unthinking  substance,"  as  self-contradictory  because 
lending  itself  to  no  idea  that  we  can  frame  of  its  existence  But, 
if  on  the  other  hand,  by  matter  is  meant  merely  the  things  present 
to  us  in  external  preception,  Berkeley  says  that  he  finds  no  great 
difficulty  with  the  term.  "I  do  not  argue  against  the  existence  of 
any  one  thing  that  we  can  apprehend  either  by  sense  or  reflection. 
That  the  things  I  see  with  my  eyes  and  touch  with  my  hands  do 
exist,  I  make  not  the  least  question.  The  only  thing  whose  exist- 
ence we  deny  is  that  which  Philosophers  call  Matter  or  corpoajal 
substance."2 

Our  knowledge  seems  then  only  in  a  sense  to  be  confined  to 
existences  which  are  merely  subjective.  We  are,  indeed,  Berkeley 
tells  us,  confined  to  ideas  or  phenomena,  and  "to  explain  the 
phenomena,  is  all  one  as  to  show  why,  upon  such  and  such  occa- 
sions, we  are  affected  with  such  and  such  ideas."3  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  distinction  between  ideas  as  things,  and  ideas  as 
mere  creations  of  the  mind,  appears  for  Berkeley  to  keep  its  full 

1  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  §  22. 

2  Principles  §  35;  repeated  frequently  in  the  dialogues  between  Hylas  and 
Philonous. 

'Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  §  50. 


-27  — 

significance.  "There  is  a  rerum  natura  and  the  distinction  be- 
tween realities  and  chimeras  retains  its  full  force."1  For  after  all 
we  have  been  considering  the  object  in  one  of  its  aspects  merely. 
The  object  has  been  shown  to  be  resolvable  into  a  complex  of  sen- 
sations, and  is  thus  a  percept  or  idea.  But  these  sensations  are 
for  Berkeley  only  the  hypothetical  conscious  elements  into  which 
the  percept  is  ideally  resolvable,  and  its  existential  nature  is  by  no 
means  exhausted.  The  object  of  perception  has  been  called  idea 
"  because,"  as  Berkeley  tells  us  in  the  third  dialogue  between  Hylas 
and  Philonous  "a  necessary  relation  to  the  mind  is  understood  to 
be  implied  by  that  term."  But  this  does  not  of  necessity  mean 
that  it  is  not  likewise  dependent  for  its  existence  upon  something 
beyond  the  individual  consciousness  in  which  it  is  held. 

Now  Locke  has  found  that  in  order  to  determine  the  nature 
of  certain  of  our  ideas,  viz.,  those  complexes  of  sensation,  or  per- 
cepts which  we  have  been  considering,  we  must  take  into  account 
the  causal  origin  or  source  of  these  simple  ideas  of  which  the  per- 
cept (as  we  shall  now  call  it)  is  made  up.  The  percept  in  other 
words  has  a  reference  beyond  itself,  it  can  only  be  defined  by 
something  that  is  in  a  certain  sense  not  itself;  to  understand  its 
complete  nature,  we  must  recognize  that  its  being  is  not  wholly 
subjective,  but  dependent  also  upon  something  objective.  We 
have  seen  that  powers  residing  in  an  unknown  '  corporeal  sub- 
stance '  were  supposed  by  Locke  to  fulfil  the  condition  of  supply- 
ing this  need  for  something  objective  by  reference  to  which  ideas 
of  sense  could  be  explained.  But  these  powers  being  conceived 
as  objective  counterparts  of  ideas,  no  distinction  remained  between 
ideas  and  their  counterparts.  This  Berkley  has  pointed  out  with 
the  conclusion  that,  as  "an.  idea  can  be  like  nothing  but  an  idea,"2 
a  mind  dependent  thing  like  nothing  but  a  mind-dependent  thing; 
so  all  things  that  we  know  involve  a  reference  to  percipient  con- 
sciousness. Thus,  that  objective  something  has  been  wrongly  con- 
ceived, for  true  objectivity  means,  not  objectivity  of  mind  to  some- 
thing which  is  ex  hypothesi  different  from  it,  but  objectivity  of 
mind,  by  means  of  the  double  reference  of  the  percept,  to  mind  and 
to  objective  Being — as  also  Mind. 

Nor  is  it  apparent — to  dwell  somewhat  at  length  upon  this 
point — that  the  Berkelian  percept  or  thing  is,  in  its  total  character, 
entirely  comprehended  in  the  psychological  description  of  the 
bundle  of  sensations  which  compose  it;  and  that  the  causal  refer- 
ence ~"ut  the  percept  to  objective  existence  is  a  mere  artifice  by 
which  to  escape   solipsism.      It  is  not  as  though,  by  defining  the 

1  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  ^  34. 

2  Vid.  Ueberweg's  discussion  of  this  point  (Annotations  to  "Berkeley's  Prin- 
cipien,"  trans,  in  Krauth's  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  p.  343. 


—  28  — 

object  in  terms  of  sensation,  one  were  thereby  precluded  from  the 
recognition  that  objects  involve  a  reference  beyond  the  individual 
consciousness,  any  more  than,  in  regarding  the  object  as  through- 
out constituted  by  thought-relations,  one  would  be  taken  to  imply 
the  categories  which  he  as  an  individual  finds  it  convenient  to  em- 
ploy in  thinking  of  the  object.  What  Berkley  means  is  rather  the 
universal  character  which  attaches  to  the  percipient  as  well  as  to 
the  cognitive  consciousness  — the  universality  of  sense-perception 
as  an  element  not  to  be  neglected  in  our  explanation  of  experience. 
Again,  it  is  not  as  though  a  mass  of  sensations  were  thrust  into  the 
mind,  and  the  door  closed  upon  all  objective  existence;  but  we 
first  define  the  object  as  having  a  necessary  reference  to  percipi- 
ency,  and  then,  from  the  dual  character  of  mind-related  existents, 
as  objects  of  sense  and  objects  of  imagination  or  memory,  etc., 
arrive  at  the  distinction  of  mind  and  mind.  The  objective  char- 
acter which  necessarily  belongs  to  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  thing 
or  percept  cannot  consistently  be  conceived  as  matter;  it  must 
then  be  conceived  in  analogy  with  that  to  which  the  percept  has 
been  shown  to  have  a  necessary  reference,  i.  e.  mind.  How  well 
Berkeley  succeeds  in  thus  substituting  objective  mind  for  objective 
matter  is  another  question.  All  that  we  are  here  concerned  to  set 
forth  is  his  insistence  upon  a  fundamental  distinction  between 
ideas;  and  that  the  understanding  of  idea  as  percept  involves  a  con- 
sideration of  its  reference  to  other  than  the  individual  percepient 
mind.  Accordingly  we  shall  now  briefly  discuss  the  Berkelian 
idea  in  connection  with  a  second  class  of  Things  which  he  denom- 
inates mind  or  spirit. 

3 SPIRIT,    PHENOMENA    AND    IDEA. 

Tn  section  89  of  the  Principles  we  are  told  that  our  knowledge 
is  not  entirely  confined  to  ideas,  that  "the  term  idea  would  be  im- 
properly extended  to  signify  everything  we  know  or  have  any  notion 
of."  For,  "besides  all  that  endless  variety  of  ideas  or  objects  of 
knowledge  there  is  likewise  something  that  knows  or  perceives 
them."1  This  perceiving,  active  being  is  what  I  call  Mind,  Spirit, 
Soul  or  Myself" — "that  which  I  denote  by  the  term  I — which  is 
neither  an  idea,  nor  like  an  idea,  but  that  which  perceives  and 
wills,  and  reasons  about  them."2  It  is  to  this  active  perceiving 
principle  that  all  the  objects  of  sense  must  ultimately  be  referred 
for  their  explanation  since,  as  Berkeley  has  told  us,  the  reason  for 
using  the  term  idea  rather  than  object  is  that  there  is  thereby  im- 
plied a  necessary  relation  to  the  mind.  Accordingly,  if  there  are 
recognizable  differences  in  the  ideas  which  the   mind  possesses,  it 


1  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  §  2. 

2  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  §  139, 


—  29  — 

may  be  possible  to  discover  wherein  this  consists,  not  by  the  refer- 
ence of  ideas  to  a  material  substance,  but  by  the  relation  which 
seems  to  subsist  between  them  and  the  active,  perceiving  mind. 

Now  all  ideas  are  divided  into  three  classes:  "ideas  actually 
imprinted  on  the  senses;  or  else  such  as  are  perceived  by  attend- 
ing to  the  passions  and  operations  of  the  mind;  or  lastly,  ideas 
formed  by  help  of  memory  and  imagination — either  compounding, 
dividing,  or  barely  representing  those  originally  perceived  in  the 
aforesaid  ways."1  All  ideas,  however,  regarded  as  mere  objects  of 
consciousness,  are  in  themselves  passive — "there  is  nothing  of 
Power  or  Agency  included  in  them."2  With  regard  to  certain  of 
these  there  seems  to  be  involved  the  creative  or  combining  activ- 
ity of  mind;  for  "I  find  that  I  can  excite  ideas  in  my  mind  at 
pleasure  and  vary  and  shift  the  scene  as  often  as  I  think  fit"3  and 
"this  making  and  unmaking  of  ideas  doth  properly  denominate 
the  mind  active."4  But  over  another  class  of  ideas,  viz.,  those  of 
sense,  I  find  that  I  have  no  control.  These  have  a  strength,  a  live- 
liness and  distinctness  which  do  not  belong  to  the  ideas  of  the 
imagination.  They  are  chiefly  to  be  distinguished  from  ideas  that 
are  purely  subjective  by  the  fact  of  their  appearing  in  an  orderly 
and  coherent  series,  and  also  because  of  their  entire  independence 
of  the  will.  However,  these  ideas  like  all  others  are  passive  and 
mind-dependent,  they  have  no  being  apart  from  percipient  mind. 
If,  then,  the  nature  of  these  ideas,  in  distinction  from  those  of 
memory  and  imagination,  is  such  as  to  warrant  us  in  affirming 
their  objective  reference — since  they  are  not  wholly  dependent 
upon  individual  mind — we  are  led  to  conclude  their  dependence 
upon  other  mind.  "They  are  not  generated  from  within  by  the 
mind  itself"5  and  are  therefore  imprinted  upon  it  "by  a  spirit 
distinct  from  that  which  perceives  them6,  or  "there  is  some  other 
Will  or  Spirit  that  produces  them."7 

We  may  now  summarize  Berkeley's  finding  with  regard  to 
idea,  so  far  as  it  has  been  considered  in  the  present  and  preced- 
ing sections.  It  is  (i)  the  mere  atomic  element  of  conscious- 
ness or  sensation;  (2)  the  object  of  external  perception,  or 
bundle  of  sensations,  or  percept,  as  we  have  chosen  to  call  it, 
of  whose  being  relation  to  percipient  mind  is  a  necessary 
condition;  (3)  this  same  object  of  external  perception  or 
percept  in  the  being  of  which  there  is  also  involved  a  necessary 

1  "  Principles,"  §  1. 

2  Ibid  §  25. 
aIbid  §  2S. 

4  Ibid." 

5  Ibid  §  go. 

6  Ibid. 

7  Ibid  §  29. 


—  30  — 

dependence  upon  objective  mind.  .  Gradually  as  the  philosophy  of 
Berkeley  progresses,  the  term  phenomenon  '  is  substituted  for  idea, 
but  if,  in  our  interpretation,  we  discard  the  latter  and  adopt  the  new 
term,  the  two-fold  meaning  which  may  be  given  to  the  'phenom- 
enon'  must  be  borne  in  mind.  On  the  one  hand  'phenomenon' 
implies  for  Berkeley  a  reference  backward  to  the  elemental  con- 
scious facts  which  make  up  its  being,  on  the  other  hand  there  is  in 
it  implied  a  reference  forward  to  objective  consciousness. 

In  truth,  the  object  and  the  sensation  are  the  same  and  can- 
not therefore  be  abstracted  from  each  other."2  This  was  Berke- 
ley's answer  to  the  Cartesian  dualistic  hypothesis.  As  the  object 
and  sensation  can  only  be  ideally  separated,  we  must  interpret  one 
in  terms  of  the  other.  Thus,  upon  the  direct  evidence  of  consci- 
ous experience,  we  have  partially  carried  out  this  programme  as 
witnessed  in  the  fact  that  the  object  is  resolvable  into  sensation. 
But  it  would  be  a  misinterpretation  of  his  principle  if  we  were  to 
stop  at  this  single  and  one-sided  application;  for  if  the  object  and 
sensation  are  only  ideally  separable,  it  seems  not  an  illegitimate 
method  of  procedure  to  insist  that,  as  sensational  character  is 
always  necessary  to  the  being  of  an  object,  so  also  sensation  pos- 
sesses a  true  objective  character  which  cannot  rightfully  be 
denied  it. 

In  order  to  exhibit  these  two  equally  necessary  views  of  the  phe- 
nomenon, their  mutual  relation  would  have  to  be  shown;  but  this 
would  involve  a  discussion  of  the  Berkelian  '  relations  '  between 
ideas,  the  third  of  the  objects  of  our  knowledge,  and  this  we  have  re- 
served for  the  succeeding  chapter,  as  also  the  more  complete  deter- 
mination of  his  view  of  the  self  and  objective  mind,  for  upon  this 
depends  in  large  part  the  adequacy  or  inadequacy  of  the  hypo- 
thesis which  he  substitutes  for  Cartesian  "corporeal  substance." 
All  that  we  are  concerned  with  here  is  the  determination  of  the 
various  meanings  in  which  Berkeley  uses  idea.  This  we  have  seen, 
in  one  of  its  aspects,  viz.,  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  objectivity, 
involves  a  reference  to  Things  to  which  in  the  present  chapter  we 

1  One  of  Ueberweg's  objections  to  Collyn's  use  of  '  phenomenon  '  rather 
than  'idea,'  in  his  interpretation  of  Berkeley,  is  that  the  term  phenomenon 
denotes  a  complex  of  sensations.  (Annotations;  Krauth's  "  Principles,"  p.  331).  I 
cannot  avoid  thinking,  however,  that  idea  is  more  often  used  in  the  later  works 
for  the  composite,  the  phenomenon,  rather  than  for  the  object  of  the  special  senses. 
Another  of  Ueberweg's  objections  is  that  the  "word  Erscheimmg  presupposes  a 
thing-in-itself  of  which  it  is  the  phenomenon."  Now  with  all  Berkeley's  zeal  in 
disclosing  to  us  the  'new  doctrine'  that  the  senses  report  truly  an  external  world, 
with  all  his  eagerness  in  demonstrating  the  non-existence  of  '  unknown  substance  ' 
this  insistence  upon  the  esse-is-percepi  should  not  conceal  the  fact  that  for  Berke- 
ley the  being  of  the  phenomenon  is  grounded  upon  something  other  than  the  indi- 
vidual consciousness.  The  thing-in-itself  is,  in  short,  the  content  of  the  divine  con- 
sciousness, an  unknown  but  not  an  unknowable. 

2  "Principles,"  §  5. 


—  31  — 

shall  attempt  to  assign  no  precise  signification.  For  the  present 
we  shall  content  ourselves  with  the  simple  recognition  that  the 
being  of  the  phenomenon  is  in  part  dependent  upon  the  Will  of  a 
more  powerful  Spirit  than  the  finite,  viz.,  God,  who  is  able  to  pro- 
duce in  the  latter  the  regular  and  orderly  series  of  phenomena 
which  constitute  the  objective  system  of  Nature. 

In  the  Theory  of  Vision,  we  saw  that  ideas  as  sensations  were 
merely  the  signs  which  enabled  us  to  become  aware  of  other  sen- 
sations; and,  JiuTther,  we  saw  that  sensations  always  come  to  us  in 
groups.  It  is  the  extended,  colored,  tangible  thing  that  we  actu- 
ally meet  with  in  our  experience,  rather  than  the  mere  sensation. 
The  latter,  as  it  were,  receives  its  being  merely  from  the  fact  of  its 
being  one  of  a  manifold.  This  truth  was  expressed,  in  the  case  of 
visual  signs,  by  instituting  an  analogy  of  visual  signs  with  those  of 
human  language,  colors  i.  e.  mere  visual  sensations,  together  with 
their  variations  of  light  and  shade,  make  up  for  us  a  sort  of  visual 
sign-language  or  "Universal  Language  of  Nature."  In  the  Prin- 
ciples, however,  in  which,  it  is  true,  the  sensationalistic  or  empiri- 
cal view  is  brought  to  a  completion  and  throughout  emphasized,  it 
is  also  apparent  that  this  "Universal  Language  of  Nature  "  is  of 
supersensous  or  extra  human  origin.  The  phenomenal  object  or 
intuited  manifold  of  sensations  in  turn  receives  its  complete  expla- 
nation not  only  in  the  sensations  of  which  it  is  made  up  but  by  its 
objective  reference  to  something  other  than  itself.  As  sensations 
are  significant  of  the  object,  as  by  them  we  are  taught  to  expect 
the  possible  future  sensations  in  the  groups  constituting  the  object 
of  external  perception,  so  on  the  other  hand  is  the  phenomonal 
object  itself  representative  of  a  Divine  order  of  Nature  with  regard 
to  which  the  phenomenon  is  merely  the  significant  sign.  It  is  this 
second  meaning  of  ideas  that  occasions  the  frequent  use  of  the 
word  phenomenon  in  the  dialogues  of  Berkeley  and  particularly  in 
Siris. 

Viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Berkelian  idea,  the  altered 
meaning  which  it  receives  by  being  regarded  as  phenomenon  is 
one  of  the  chief  features  which  distinguish  the  later  philosophy  of 
Siris  from  the  earlier  standpoint  of  the  Theory  of  Vision  and  the 
Principles.  In  the  latter  work  phenomenon  and  Idea,  rather  than 
sensation  and  percept  claim  our  attention. 

In  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge.  "Idea"  and 
"archetype"  receive  only  a  brief  treatment  at  Berkeley's  hands. 
In  this  work,  as  we  know,  his  chief  insistence  was  upon  the  im- 
possibility of  the  existence  of  abstract  matter  in  any  of  the  signi- 
fications in  which  it  had  hitherto  been  maintained  by  the  philoso- 
phers.     Accordingly,    ai_Jthis_„pQint/    having  considered  various 

1  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  §  71. 


32  — 


other  meanings  of  matter,  he  briefly  dismisses  the  notion  of  arche- 
typal ideas,  understood  as  quasi-material  forms,  independent  of  the 
Divine  mind,  and  in  accordance  with  which  the  latter  creates  the 
world.1  The  constitution  of  the  world  must  throughout  conform 
to  that  type  of  reality  which,  as  it  enters  into  our  experience,  we 
variously  denote  by  the  terms  mind,  or  self  or  spirit;  and  arche- 
types of  our  own  ideas,  if  such  be  admitted,  can  exist  only  in  some 
other  mind.} 

But  that  there  are  certain  unknown  Ideas  in  the  Mind  of  God 
— archetypal  forms  not  independent  of  his  will — Berkley  does  not 
deny.  Indeed  his  later  philosophy  moves  almost  exclusively  in 
the  region  of  these  Platonic  existences.  This  does  not  mean  how- 
ever that  the  earlier  empirical  standpoint  is  now  abandoned,  but 
only  that  there  is  a  greater  insistence  upon  the  objectivity  of  the 
idea  which  we  have  before  noticed.  In  this  latter  aspect,  the  re- 
ality of  the  thing  or  phenomenal  object  is  seen  to  depend  not  only 
upon  its  relation  to  percipient  mind;  its  complete  reality  can  only 
be  understood  by  reference  to  universal,  creative  mind.  Accord- 
ingly Berkeley  is  brought  to  the  fuller  recognition  of  an  archetypal 
system  of  forms,  Ideas,  or  Divine  meanings,  of  which  the  phenom- 
enal object  is  merely  the  significent  sign.  For  "do  I  not  acknowl- 
edge "  says  he  in  the  third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous 
"a  two-fold  state  of  things — the__ane  ectypal  or  natural,  the  other 
archetypal  and  eternal?  The  former  was  created  in  time,  the  lat- 
ter existed  from  everlasting  in  the  mind  of  God."  In  Siris  the 
discovery  of  this  archetypal  system  by  means  of  interpretable 
sense-given  phenomena,  is  regarded  as  the  true  end  of  all  human 
endeavor. 

But  the  archetypal  form  or  Idea,  although  certainly  indicat- 
ing a  much  closer  affiliation  to  the  Platonic  philosophy  than  is  dis- 
coverable in  any  of  Berkeley's  earlier  works,  cannot  be  identified 
with  Idea  in  the  strictly  Platonic  sense  of  the  word.  For  it  is 
with  Berkeley  equivalent  to  the  "notion,"  which  in  our  discussion 
of  the  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  we 
took  to  be  his  recognition  of  the  conceptual  character  that  attaches 
to  ideas.  If  we  read  this  later  doctrine  in  the  light  of  his  earlier 
work,  idea  does  not  appear  to  us  as  the  vague  and  shadowy  rem- 
iniscence of  an  intangible  universe  of  pure  forms,  from  which  we 
are  cut  off,  save  by  the  negation  of  sense-reality  and  the  indulgence 
of  the  contemplative  and  speculative  mood.  Rather  is  it  the  case 
that  the  Berkelian  world  appears  here  and  now,  with  the  noticeable 
difference  between  the  earlier  and  later  construction  of  it,  that  the 
conceptual  is  at  last  accorded  the  just  recognition  which  was  ever 


xFraser;  "Philosophy  of  Berkeley,"  Blackwood  series  pp.  350-353. 
2  "  Principles,"  §  99. 


—  33  — 

implied  in  Berkeley's  insistence  upon  the  objective  nature  of  the 
idea,  as  of  equal  importance  with  its  subjective  reference.  Objec- 
tive and  subjective  are  alike  aspects  of  the  phenomenon,  the  thing 
present  to  perception.  In  this  objectivity  of  the  idea  we  have  one 
of  the  elements  by  which  the  antithetical  poles  of  Berkeley's  phil- 
osophy, his  earlier  empiricism  and  later  Rationalism,  are  united  in 
the  thought  of  a  spiritual  unfolding  of  Nature  in  which  we  pass  by 
gradual  steps  from  the  mere  sense-given  phenomena  to  the  Ideas 
of  imminent  law  and  order,  goodness  and  moral  government,  in 
the  absence  of  which  imminent  Ideas  of  Reason  there  would  be  for 
us  no  world,  but  chaos. 

To  treat  otherwise  than  in  this  brief  fashion  these  objects  of 
human  knowledge  which,  because  of  their  changed  notation,  appear 
in  Siris  as  new  elements  foreign  to  the  earlier  thought  of  Berkeley, 
would  be  to  run  too  far  afield  upon  ground  which  should  more 
properly  be  covered  in  our  subsequent  enquiries.     We  have  so  far 
attempted  to  show,  not  without  the  cost  of  some  tedious  but  neces- 
sary repetition,  the  various  meanings  which  Berkeley  assigns  to  the 
word  idea.      In  the  interest  of  clearness,  I  subjoin  the  following 
summary  at  the  close  of  this  chapter: 
J    "Vi.     Idea  is  used  as  object  of  the  special  senses,  sound,  color, 
j  touch,  etc.;  but  color  is  never  perceived  except  as  something  col- 
ored and  extended;  touch  is  always  the  feeling  of  something  resist- 
I  ing  and  possessing  form.     Consequently  single  objects  of  the  special 
\ senses  are  never  true  objects  for  us,  i.  e.  perceived.     Idea  in  this 
first  sense  is  then  'mere  sensation'. 

2.  Idea  as  the  immediate  object  or  phenomenon  of  percep-  *•> 
tion,  resolvable  into  particular  sensations  and  consequently  depen- 
dent  for  its   being  upon  percipient  mind.      Idea  as  such   is  the 
complex  of  sensations,  marked  by  one  name,  and  so  regarded  as  a 

thing. 

3.  Idea  in  the  foregoing  sense,  but  distinguished  from  the 
'subjective    contents    of    the    individual    consciousness,    and    thus 

regarded  as  dependent  upon  objective  mind. 

-Q  4.      Idea  as  archetype,  Platonic  idea  or  Notion.      Or  we  may 
express  it  thus: 

1.  idea  =  'mere  sensation'. 

(  a.   as  complex  of  sensations. 

2.  idea  =  phenomenon -j  b.  as  conceptual,  and  in  this  latter 

(  sense  the  equivalent  of: 

3.  Idea  as  Notion. 

A  concluding  word  with  regard  to  these  three  classes  in  order 
to  free  from  ambiguity  these  various  meanings  of  the  word  idea,  may 
be  necessary,  and  may  serve  to  acquaint  us  in  advance  with  some 
of  the  difficulties  we  are  likely  to  encounter  in  our  farther  review 
of  Berkeley's  interpretation  of  experience.     In  the  first  place,  idea 


—  34  — 

as  'mere  sensation'  seems  grossly  at  variance  with  his  frequently 
repeated  assertions  that  ideas  are  particular,  definite,  discoverable 
mental  contents.  I  am  also  of  the  opinion  that  idea  is  most  fre- 
quently used  by  Berkeley  in  the  sense  of  phenomenon,  i.  e.  it  implies 
more  than  the  sensations  which  constitute  it  actually  reveal  in  per- 
ception. In  fact  it  is  never  the  -mere  sensation'  when  the  idea  is 
consciously  perceived.  -jjBut  the  phenomenon,  it  was  in  part  Berke- 
ley's mission  to  tell  us,  is  in  every  case  resolvable  into  those  units; 
and,  as  it  is  only  the  complex  that  is  perceived,  it  seems  that  in  his 
earlier  philosophy  Berkeley  does  have  reference  to  these  atomic 
elements  of  consciousness  or  hypothetical  sensations.  The  phen- 
omenon, as  a  complex  of  sensations,  needs  no  further  notice  here; 
but  to  the  phenomenon  in  its  objective  reference,  attach,  in  one 
form  or  another,  most  of  the  difficulties  we  are  likely  to  encounter 
in  the  following  chapters.  And,  as  a  tentative  step,  we  take  the 
philosopher's  word  for  it  that  in  doing  away  with  Locke's  'abstract 
material  substance',  he  has  merely  denied  the  causal  reference  of 
sense  objects  to  such  substance,  while,  in  doing  this,  by  showing 
the  necessary  relation  to  percipient  consciousness  of  all  such  ob- 
jects, he  has  not  thereby  affected  the  object,  or  denied  to  it  all 
causal  reference  to  objective  existence,  but  has  merely  substituted 
mind  for  matter. 

The  question  which  is  thus  raised  for  us  is:  What  is  the  nature  of 
the  Divine  Being  which  Berkeley  thus  substitutes  for  substance? 
Is  it  a  deistically  conceived  contrivance,  artificially  introduced  to 
escape  subjectivity  and  support  theistic  belief,  or  is  his  view  of  the 
personality  of  God  and  man  the  rationally  grounded  consequence 
of  a  new  meaning  which  he  gives  to  'idea'?  Again,  is  the  order, 
steadiness  and  regularity  which  he  ascribes  to  the  ideas  of  sense, 
thereby  distinguishing  them  from  subjective  fancies,  consistently 
maintained  in  a  philosophy  which  seems  to  destroy  the  ground  on 
which  it  stands  by  the  acknowledgment  that  all  ideas  are  particular? 
And,  finally,  in  the  archetypes  or  Ideas  of  Reason  which  occupy 
so  bold  a  position  in  Siris,  do  we  encounter  importations  foreign 
to  the  life  current  of  Berkeley's  thought,  or  are  we  here  only 
brought  to  a  better  understanding  of  less  familiar  but  none  the  less 
important  elements  in  his  early  theory  of  knowledge?  If  the 
philosophy  of  Siris  merely  represents  a  platonizing  mood  into  which 
Berkeley  fell  in  his  declining  years,  there  is  no  discoverable  rela- 
tion between  his  earlier  negative  and  his  later  positive  idealism. 
But  if  the  Idea,  which  seems  in  Siris  the  instrument  and  motive  by 
which  he  reaches  his  final  conclusions  is  affiliated,  as  we  have  sug- 
gested, to  other  elements  of  his  earlier  works,  we  may  not  be  forced 
to  a  decision  between  Empiricism  and  Rationalism  which  will  be 
altogether  without  evidence  in  support  of  the  latter  and  less  fre- 
quently accepted  view. 


CHAPTER   III. 

CONSTITUTION    OF    EXPERIENCE. 

i .     Relations, 
a.     Arbitrary  Connection  . 

A  third  of  the  objects  of  human  knowledge  are  relations.  We 
have  thus  far  instanced  the  various  meanings  in  which  Berkeley- 
used  the  word  idea  in  the  earlier  and  later  phases  of  his  idealism, 
and  we  have  now  to  consider  the  manner  of  their  connection.  In 
the  first  place,  we  may  again  note  that  the  point  cP  appui  which 
served  to  introduce  Berkeley  into  his  new  idealistic  universe  was 
the  reduction  of  Locke's  primary  qualities  to  the  secondary,  there- 
by equating  all  the  sensations  derived  from  the  special  senses. 
This  constituted  his  negative  disproof  of  matter.  So  far  as  con- 
cerned the  existence  of  'abstract  matter',  the  testimony  of  the 
senses  at  any  rate  could  not  be  alleged  in  its  behalf.  But  matter 
had  been  regarded  as  the  cause,  if  not  primary,  at  least  the  causal 
agent,  and  idea  the  effect.  Accordingly  in  the  absence  of  matter  and 
the  consequent  denial  of  a  material  cause  it  results  that  any  phen- 
omenal object  or  any  object  of  the  special  senses  is,  in  itself,  re- 
garded as  particular,  inactive,  destitute  of  power  or  causal  agency. 

Now  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect  may  be  for  us  an  orig- 
inal, und-erivative  revelation  of  the  rational  consciousness1;  and 
this  is  by  no  means  denied,  for  in  the  second  dialogue  between 
Hylas  and  Philonous  the  latter  is  made  to  say:  'I  do  by  no  means 
find  fault  with  your  reasoning  in  that  you  collect  a  cause  from  the 
phenomenon,  but  I  deny  the  cause  deducible  by  reason  can  prop- 
erly be  termed  matter.'  But,  on  the  other  hand,. if  causal  agency 
can  no  longer  be  attributed  to  the  objects  of  sense,  since  they  are 
now  phenomena;  and  since  the  combining  and  relating  activity,  in 
so  far  as  that  may  be  attributed  to  the  mere  individual  conscious- 
ness, does  not  extend  to  these  ideas  of  sense;  we  must  discover 
some  other  connection,  by  means  of  which  the  presence  of  the 
phenomenon  may  be  accounted  for  and  the  nature  of  the  cause 
revealed  to  us. 

Now,  in  the  process  of  introspectively  analysing  the  contents 
of  consciousness,  we  found  that  the  ideas  obtained  by  one  sense 
are  translatable  into  terms  of  another  sense.     But  we  further  dis- 

1Fraser;   "Berkeley,"  Blackwood  Phllos.  Classics,  p.  ig8. 


—  36  — 

covered  that  the  objects  of  one  sense  are,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
totally  unlike  those  of  another.  True,  the  very  process  which 
serves  to  display  their  heterogeneity  exhibits  also — because  of  the 
parallel  discovery  of  their  interpretability  in  terms  of  each  other — 
the  mind-dependence  of  all  objects  of  consciousness.  Yet,  intro- 
spection stops  short  of  telling  us  why  the  objects  should  be  inter- 
pretable  in  terms  of  others  unlike  them.  There  is  then,  for  us,  no 
discoverable  necessary  connection  between  ideas.1  But  we  can  no 
longer  explain  the  phenomenal  object  in  terms  of  matter;  and 
mind,  if  it  cannot  discover  to  us  the  why,  may  at  least  serve  to 
exhibit  the  how  of  the  connection. 

This  Berkeley  proceeds  to  show  by  instituting  the  parallelism 
between  sense  symbols  and  words,  the  significant  signs  of  human 
speech.  In  the  latter  case,  words  have  no  similarity  to  the  mean- 
ings which  they  serve  to  .convey,  to  the  sound  waves  or  the 
nerve  processes  by  which  the  result  is  brought  about.  That  sounds 
should  signify  meanings  at  all  does  not  seem  necessary;  and  the 
fact  that  an  articulate  word  is  understood  to  have  a  definite  meaning 
shows  the  arbitrariness  of  human  speech.  Thus  also  the  written 
word  'distance'  is  wholly  unlike  the  uttered  sound  or  the  visual 
colors  which  also  serve  to  suggest  distance,  or  finally  the  tactual 
or  muscular  data  which  likewise  introduce  the  idea  of  distance  into 
the  mind.  Neither  is  there  any  necessary  connection  between  col- 
ors and  tangible  magnitude.  "Confusion  [in  the  outlines  of  the 
object]  or  faintness  [of  color]  have  no  more  a  necessary  connec- 
tion with  little  or  great  magnitude  than  they  have  with  little  or  great 
distance."2  "Farther,  when  one  has  by  experience  learned  the  con- 
nection there  is  between  the  several  ideas  of  sight  and  touch,  he 
will  be  able,  by  the  perception  he  has  of  the  situation  of  visible 
things  in  respect  of  one  .another,  to  make  a  sudden  and  true  esti- 
mate of  the  situation  of  outward,  tangible  things  corresponding  to 
them.  And  thus  he  shall  perceive  by  sight  the  situation  of  external 
objects,  which  do  not  properly  fall  under  that  sense.3" 

With  regard  to  the  nature  of  this  connection,  "when,  upon 
perception  of  an  idea,  I  range  it  under  this  or  that  sort  it  is 
because  it  is  perceived  after  the  same  manner,  or  because  it  has  a 
likeness  or  conformity  with  or  affects  me  in  the  same  way  as  the 
ideas  of  the  sort  I  rank  it  under"*  Thus  the  experience  of  a 
customary  connection  between  ideas  is  sufficient  to  account  for 
the  presence  of  the  phenomenal  object,  and  the  manner  in  which 
this  connection  is  brought  about  is  by  our  perceiving  the  likeness 

1 '  Philosophy  of  Berkeley  '  in   "Life,   Letters,   etc.,"  pp.   374—375.     Fraser; 
"Berkeley,"  Blackwood  Series  P-  198. 
1  "Theory  of  Vision,"  §  58. 

3  Ibid  §  99. 

4  Ibid  8  128. 


V 


—  37  — 

or  conformity  of  one  idea  with  another  or  recognizing  that  we  are 
affected  by  one  idea  as  we  are  affected  by  another.  The  arbi- 
trariness of  human  language  is  paralleled  by  this  arbitrariness  of 
the  sense  symbolism,  and  in  both  cases  it  is  experience  that 
instructs  us  in  the  use  of  these  symbols.  The  externalization  of 
objects  in  space  Berkeley  takes  to  be  accounted  for  by  his  sensa- 
tionalistic  machinery;  and  Space,  in  any  other  sense  than  as  an 
empirical  product,  here  falls  under  the  general  condemnation  of 
abstract  ideas. 1  So  likewise  Time  is  the  empirical  succession  of 
sensations,  not,  as  with  Locke,  a  succession  taken  to  denote  time, 
but  a  succession  constitutive  of  time. 

In  §  147  of  the  Theory  of  Vision  the  empirical  theory  as  it 
appears  to  Berkeley  is  fairly  summed  up.  It  is  as  follows: 
"Upon  the  whole,  I  think  we  may  fairly  conclude  that  the  proper 
objects  of  vision  constitute  the  Universal  Language  of  Nature, 
whereby  we  are  instructed  how  to  regulate  our  actions,  in  order 
to  attain  those  things  that  are  necessary  to  the  preservation  and 
well  being  of  our  bodies,  as  also  to  avoid  whatever  may  be  hurtful 
and  destructive  of  them.  It  is  by  this  information  that  we  are 
principally  guided  in  all  the  transactions  and  concerns  of  life. 
And  the  manner  wherein  they  signify  and  mark  out  unto  us  the 
objects  which  are  at  a  distance  is  the  same  with  that  of  languages 
and  signs  of  human  appointment;  which  do  not  suggest  the  things 
signified  by  any  likeness  or  identity  of  nature,  but  only  by  an 
habitual  connection  that  experience  has  made  us  to  observe 
between  them."2  This  constitutes  Berkely's  empiricism,  "  a  posi- 
tion which  was  never  lost  sight  of  in  spite  of  later  rationalistic 
developments;  for,  twenty-three  years  after  the  Theory  of  Vision 
was  published,  its  vindication  appeared,  in  which  is  maintained  the 
governing  principle  of  that  former  work,  viz.  the  passivity  of 
all  ideas  in  so  far  as  they  are  received  as  mere  particulars,  regard- 
less of  the  combining  and  relating  activity"  of  mind. 

But  we  may  ask:  does  this  perceived  likeness  between  ideas 
mean  merely  a  way  that  sensations  have  of  forming  themselves 
into  groups,  and  so  constituting  a  product  utterly  unlike  the 
sensations  of  which  it  is  composed;  or,  since  sensations  are  in 
themselves  heterogeneous,  is  there  implied  in  the  perceived  like- 
ness a  reference  to  the  combining  activity  of  mind?  Now  Berkeley 
makes  no  enquiry  into  the  presuppositions  which  render  experience 
possible;  he  does  not  search  out  principles  or  categories  which 
function  in  a  manifold  of  sense  foreign  to  them  by  nature. 
Unitary  mind,  as  active,  synthetic,  is  the  presupposition  from 
which  he  starts.     His  dualism  is  not  between  sense  and   under- 

1Fraser;  "  Berkeley,"  Blackwood  Philos.  Classics,  p.  136. 
2 Theory  of  Vision,  §  147. 


—  38  — 

standing;  it  is  between  mind  and  mind.  By  reference  to  mind  as 
the  conscious  unity  of  a  manifold,  Locke's  primary  qualities  had 
been  reduced  to  their  condition  of  mind-dependence,  and  in  Berke- 
ley's empirical  explanation  of  the  constitution  of  the  object,  sensa- 
tions are  regarded  as  significant  signs  only  because  of  their  relation 
to  mind.  This  is  apparent  even  in  the  "Theory  of  Vision,"  and,  if 
one  reads  his  earlier  philosophy  in  the  light  of  his  later  work,  it 
seems  less  necessary  to  read  Berkeley  through  Hume.  That  mind 
or  self  was  at  first  conceived  by  means  of  crude  categories,  and 
thus  justly  merited  the  censure  of  Hume,  it  would  be  idle  to  dispute; 
but  the  spirit-substance  was  only  a  feeble  echo  of  Locke's  tabula 
rasa  and  foreign  to  Berkeley's  'active  mind'  and  to  the  'Reason' 
of  "  Siris." 

b.      Necessary  Connection. 

We  have  already  noticed  that  the  ideas  of  sense  are  distin- 
tinguished  from  those  of  imagination,  first,  because  of  their  greater 
liveliness  and  distinctness;  second,  because  of  their  independence 
of  the  individual  mind;  finally,  from  the  observed  fact  of  their 
appearing  in  a  regular,  orderly  and  coherent  series.  Itwas  reserved 
for  Hume  to  give  exclusive  prominence  to  the  first  of  these  distinc- 
tions; but  for  Berkeley  this  liveliness  and  distinctness  of  the  ideas 
of  sense  is  merely  a  characteristic  mark  observed  to  accompany 
ideas  whose  special  designating  feature  is  the  orderliness  and  regu- 
larity of  their  production. 

The  phenomenal  object  having  been  resolved  into  its  sensa- 
tional constituents,  no  likeness  or  affinity  between  these  sensations 
or  objects  of  the  special  senses  can  be  discovered.  No  value  at- 
taches to  them  except  as  they  are  understood  to  be  signs  and  so 
recognized  by  the  mind  by  reference  to  which  their  meanings  are 
exhibited  in  the  gradual  unfolding  of  experience.  Experience 
"teaches  us  that  such  and  such  ideas  are  attended  with  such  and 
such  other  ideas  "' — herein  consists  the  arbitrariness  of  the  connec- 
tion— but  "the  set  rules  or  established  methods  wherein  the  Mind 
we  depend  on  excites  in  us  the  ideas  of  sense,  are  called  the  laws 
of  nature;  and  these  we  learn  by  experience."2  And  "all  this  we 
know,  not  by  discovering  any  necessary  connection  between  our 
ideas,  but  only  by  the  observation  of  the  settled  laws  of  nature."3 
The  law  of  cause  and  effect  does  not  subsist  between  ideas,  for 
these,  as  mere  passive  particulars,  serve  only  as  signs  by  which  the 
mind  is  enabled  to  gather  rational  meanings  and  understand  the 
laws  imposed  upon  the  finite  by  a  Supreme  Mind;  for  ideas  of 
sense,   being  impressed   in   accordance  with    "Rules  or  Laws   of 

1  "Principles";  §  30. 

2  Ibid. 
3Ibid  §31. 


—  39  — 

Nature,  speak  themselves  the  effects  of  a  mind  more  powerful  and 
wise  than  human  spirits."1  Thus  no  phenomenal  object  can  be  a 
cause,  phenomena  are  merely  effects,  and,  in  the  case  of  an  apparent 
affinity  of  one  substance  for  another  or  the  observed  attraction  of 
one  body  to  another,  nothing  is  signified  besides  the  effect  itself. 

To  the  objection  that  for  purposes  of  scientific  enquiry  secon- 
dary causes,  at  least,  must  be  admitted,  Berkeley  replies  that  the 
hypothesis  of  the  uniformity  and  invariability  of  nature  is  in  no 
wise  affected  upon  his  principles.  "There  are  certain  general 
laws  that  run  through  the  whole  chain  of  natural  effects;  these  are 
learned  by  the  observation  and  study  of  nature,  and  are  by  men 
applied  .  .  -to  the  explaining  of  the  various  phenomena — which 
explanation  consists  only  in  showing  the  conformity  any  particular 
phenomenon  hath  to  the  general  laws  of  nature,  or,  which  is  the' 
same  thing,  in  discovering  the  uniformity  there  is  in  the  production 
of  natural  effects."2  Complete  knowledge  of  the  phenomenon  we 
cannot  have,  not  because  it  is  in  its  nature  alien  to  mind,  but  be- 
cause the  'efficient  cause'  which  produces  it  is  the  'will  of  a 
spirit';  yet  we  can  obtain  "a  greater  largeness  of  comprehension, 
whereby  analogies,  harmonies  and  agreements  are  discovered  in 
the  works  of  nature,  and  the  particular  effects  explained,  that  is, 
reduced  to  general  rules"3 — or  categories. 

In  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge  the  objectivity  of  the 
laws,  by  means  of  which  a  world  in  space  and  time  is  made  possible, 
is  seemingly  accepted  as  a  fact  based  upon  simple  observation  of 
phenomena,  than  which  there  are  no  more  ultimate  facts  for  us. 
In  the  unitariness  of  the  phenomenon  we  have  not  only  a  thing  as 
a  cluster  of  sensations  marked  by  one  name,  but  a  thing  which  in 
its  unity  is  itself  an  object  of  consciousness,  an  idea.  Accordingly, 
as  we  have  elsewhere  said,  the  character  of  the  phenomenon  is  not 
completely  exhausted  in  the  mere  discovery  of  its  sensational  con- 
stituents, for  simple  observation  of  it,  as  it  is  intuitively  appre- 
hended in  consciousness,  reveals  it  a  thing,  distinguished  from  other 
things,  in  spite  of  psychological  analysis  and  the  mere  description 
of  how  it  has  come  to  be.  But  not  being  independent  of  mind,  the 
further  explication  of  phenomena  must  again  take  place  only  with 
reference  to  mind;  i.  e.,  I  must  simply  observe  the  relation  between 
mind  and  phenomena  in  this  second  character.  This  reveals  that 
phenomena,  as  also  the  relations  which  apparently  subsist  between 
them,  are  independent  of  my  mind,  i.  e.,  mind  in  so  far  as  I  have 
a  knowledge  of  its  acts  and  operations;  and  this  constitutes,  in 
Berkeley's  earlier  philosophy,  the  objectivity  of  natural  phenomena 
and  the  laws  by  which  they  are  governed. 

1 ''Principles";  §  36. 
2  Ibid  §  62. 
3 Ibid  §  105. 


T 


—  40  — 

Thus,  (i)  the  'Principles'  endeavors  to  establish  the  objec- 
tivity of  laws  upon  the  the  observation  of  ideas  as  ultimate  facts 
of  consciousness,  which  presumably  reveals  the  fact  that  these 
phenomena  and  their  relations  are  independent  of  the  indiviual 
will.  (2)  Accordingly  they  are  to  be  referred  to  a  Supreme  Mind 
here  conceived  under  the  catagory  of  Will.  From  this  there  results 
a  subordination  of  Reason  to  Will  and  the  apparent  liability  of 
these  objective  laws  of  nature  (even  granting  their  objectivity  to 
have  been  established  by  so  simple  a  process)  to  be  subverted  by 
a  capricious  Will;  —  "we  may  discover  the  general  laws  of  nature, 
and  from  them  deduce  the  other  phenomena;  I  do  not  say  demon- 
state,  for  all  deduction  of  that  kind  depends  on  a  supposition  that 
the  Author  of  Nature  always  operates  uniformily,  and  in  constant 
observance  of  those  rules  we  take  for  principles — which  we  cannot 
evidently  know."1 

It  is  in  the  'Principles'  that  the  sufficiency  of  the  Berkeleiansign 
language  for  the  explanation  of  experience  seems  most  apparently 
to  depend  upon  the  support  of  a  deistic  theology,  while,  in  Siris, 
Reason  rather  than  Will  is  looked  upon  as  the  supreme  category; 
and  the  discovery  of  the  objectivity  of  law  is  based  upon  a  deeper 
insight  into  the  implications  of  the  phenomenal  objects,  and  a 
recognition  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  early  empirical  position  as  an 
ultimate  explanation  of  the  phenomenal  universe.  "The  inner  bonds 
which  weld  the  perceived  universe  into  a  rational  whole  are  now 
made  subjects  of  reflection,2  and  the  issue  is  the  discovery  that  the 
universals  of  Reasons  are  immanent  in  sense.  In  accordance  with 
the  established  connections,  no  longer  referred  to  the  arbitrary 
imposition  of  Divine  Will,  it  is  seen  that  "the  mind  of  man  acts 
by  an  instrument  necessarily.  The  to  7]y£p.ovix)n\,  or  mind  presiding 
in  the  world  acts  by  an  instrument  freely.3  Secondary  causes  are 
now  admitted;  for  "without  instrumental  and  secondary  causes,  there 
could  be  no  regular  course  of  nature.  And  without  a  regular  course 
nature  could  never  be  understood."4  Berkeley  never  dreams  ofi 
departing  from  his  early  belief  that  mechanical  causes  cannot  be 
received  as  ultimate  explanations;  but  there  is  a  much  stronger  in- 
sistence upon  their  usefulness  and  necessity,  as  mechanical  hypoth- 
eses. "There  is  an  analogy,  constancy  and  uniformity  in  the  phenom- 
ena or  appearances  of  nature,  which  are  a  foundation  for  general 
rules;  and  these  are  a  Grammar  for  the  understanding  of  Nature"5 
and   "so  far  as  men  have  studied  and  remarked  its  rules,  and  can 

^bid  §107.     Works  Yol.  I. 

2Wenley;   "British  Thought  and  Modern  Speculation";  in  Scottish  Review, 
Jan.,  1892,  vol.  19,  p.  150. 
8  "  Siris  "  §  160. 
*"  Siris"  §  160. 
5 "Siris"  §  252. 


—  41  — 

interpret  right,  so  far  they  may  be  said  to  be  knowing  in  nature."1 
We  must  now  elearly  recognize  that  sense  is  of  itself  insufficient  to 
constitute  the  phenomenal  world  of  objects  as  we  find  it.  The  phe- 
nomena of  nature  strike  on  the  senses  and  are  understood  by  the 
mind2  i.e.,  'Thought,  Reason,  Intellect,  introduce  us  into  the 
knowledge  of  their  causes.'3  Again,  it  is  certain  that  the  "princi- 
ples of  science  are  neither  objects  of  Sense  or  imagination;"*  "Sci- 
ence consists  not  in  the  passive  perceptions  but  in  the  reasoning 
upon  them."5 

Thus  we  are  brought  in  Siris  to  the  knowledge  of  a  new  world 
in  which  "such  is  the  mutual  relation,  connection,  motion  and 
sympathy  of  the  parts  that  they  seem,  as  it  were,  animated  and 
held  together  by  one  soul;  and  such  is  their  harmony,  order,  and 
regular  course,  as  sheweth  the  soul  to  be  governed  and  directed  by 
a  Mind."6 

As  we  are  now  constrained  to  interpret  Berkeley's  Language  of 
Nature,  we  find  that  we  must  no  longer  read  it  as  a  system  of  signs, 
arbitrarily  instituted  by  capricious  Will,  but  as  signs  whose  sole 
value  is  in  their  rational  significence.  In  the  new  universe,  with 
which  we  are  now  made  acquainted,  the  continuity  remains  unbro- 
ken. From  the  lowest  sense  given  phenomena  we  ascend  in  a  series 
of  gradations  to  the  highest  products  of  Reason  by  means  of  which 
are  discovered  the  inviolable  laws  immanent  in  an  objective  system 
of  nature.  True,'  the  various  steps  by  which  this  unfolding  of 
nature  is  accomplished  are  frequently  dominated  by  the  hylo- 
zoistic  and  animistic  conceptions  of  the  past.  Accordingly  no 
philosophy  of  nature,  worthy  the  name,  is  offered  us,  nor  indeed 
is  such  seriously  intended  by  Berkeley  in  his  review  of  the  anti- 
quated categories  of  past  philosophies;  but  the  central  feature  which 
serves  to  differentiate  his  later  from  his  earlier  idealism  nevertheless 
remains.  The  world  is  now  to  be  viewed  as  an  organic  whole,  whose 
several  parts  are  throughout  concatenated  and  sustained  by  one 
Mind.  Exeept  for  the  important  fact  that  Mind  is  now  conceived 
as  Reason  immanent  in  the  world  rather  than  as  dominant  Will, 
the  new  conceptions  do  not  seem  so  foreign  to  his  former  idealism; 
yet  by  this  there  is  apparently  introduced  a  world-wide  distinction 
between  his  later  and  earlier  doctrines. 

If  we  attempt  to  discover  the  source  of  these  new  conceptions 
we  come  upon  a  nowise  unfamiliar  assertion  that  'the  Mind,  her 
acts  and  faculties,  furnish  a  new  and  distinct  class  of  objects,'7  and 

1"  Siris,"  §   254. 

'Ibid. 

3  Ibid  §  268. 

*Ibid. 

5Ibid  §  305. 

6  Ibid  §  273. 

7  Ibid  §  297. 


—  42  — 

these  'objects' are  what  Berkeley  variously  denominates  'Ideas,' in- 
tellectual "ideas,"  intellectual  "notions,"  and  'notions.'  Now  the 
thorough  recognition  of  the  immanence  of  Reason  in  the  Berkelian 
world  of  phenomena  forbids  our  believing  that  he  has  espoused  the 
cause  of  Platonism  with  the  ardor  of  a  complete  devotee.  Siris, 
indeed,  is  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Plato;  but  to  Plato, 
Berkeley  has  never  been  a  complete  stranger,  either  to  his  spirit  or 
in  the  knowledge  of  his  works.  The  passages  suggestive  of  Plato, 
and  in  some  instances  quoted  from  him,  Berkeley  turns  to  account 
in  showing  a  'closer  correlation  of  sense  and  intellect'  than  the 
former  achieves,  while  at  the  same  time  the  passivity  of  the  idea 
through  which  Berkeley  reached  his  early  empiricism  is  not  aban- 
doned.1 The  following  indicate  his  more  explicit  recognition  in 
"Siris  "  of  the  several  functions  that  maybe  assigned  to  mind  it  its 
diverse  operations. 

In  the  first  place  "Sense  implies  an  impression  from  some 
other  being,  and  denotes  a  dependence  in  the  soul  which  hath 
it,'12  a  statement  clearly  recalling  the  influence  of  Locke  and  in- 
deed not  unsuggestive  of  Kant,  if  one  bears  in  mind  that  the  ding- 
an-sich  must  somehow  be  conceptualized,  or  else — an  alternative  of 
course  adopted  by  Fichte  and  the  Hegelians — it  declares  itself  to 
be  nothing.  Again: — "By  experiments  of  sense  we  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  lower  faculties  of  the  soul;  from  them,  whether 
by  a  gradual  evolution  or  ascent,  we  arrive  at  the  highest.  Sense 
supplies  images  to  memory.  These  become  subjects  for  fancy  to 
work  upon.  Reason  considers  and  judges  of  the  imaginations. 
And  these  acts  of  reason  become  new  objects  of  the  understand- 
ing.'3 Further  to  illustrate  the  small  part  that  is  played  by  mere 
sense,  apart  from  the  active  functioning  of  Reason: — "as  under- 
standing perceiveth  not,  that  is,  doth  not  hear,  or  see,  or  feel"  [as 

do  the  special  senses],    "so  sense  knoweth  not sense  or 

soul,  so  far  forth  as  sensitive,  knoweth  nothing."4  And  now  if  we 
would  know  what  this  has  to  do  with  the  phenomenal  object,  we 
may  note  that    "we  know  a  thing  when  we  understand  it;   and  we 

understand  it  when  we  can  interpret  or  tell  what  it  signifies 

We  perceive,  indeed,  sounds  by  hearing,  and  characters  by  sight. 
But  we  are  not  therefore  said  to  understand  them."5     They  are 

1  Berkeley's  'notions'  are  Locke's  ideas  of  relation  and  by  them  "he  pro- 
poses to  effect  a  compromise  between  the  tabula  rasa  of  Aristotle  and  the  innate 
ideas  of  Plato  and  suggests  that  though  "there  are  properly  no  ideas  or  passive 
objects  but  what  were  derived  from  Sense,"  yet  there  are  also,  besides  these,  "her 
own    acts    and    operations    [acts    of    the   mind],  such  as  notions,'   which  must  be 

referable  to  the  understanding, here  Berkeley  clearly  approximates 

to  Kant."     T.  H.  Webb;  "Veil  of  Isis,"  p.  27. 

2  "Siris,"   §  286. 

3  Ibid  §  303. 
*  Ibid  §  305. 
5 Ibid    §  253. 


—  43  — 

unintelligible  save  as  they  are  subjected  to  the  unifying  acts  of 
Reason.  In  the  uncategorized  sense  impressions  there  is  only 
unintelligible  sound,  unintelligible  color,  'perceived'  or  'rather 
present  to  sense,  but  not  understood,  not  truly  perceived  or  apper- 
c'eived.-  Only  the  correlate  of  sensations  into  which  unity  is  intro- 
duced by  the  mind  is  truly  regarded  as  an  object  distinguished  from 
other  objects  and  related  to  them.  The  former  individualized  per- 
cept is  now  looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  other  implica- 
tions, and  there  is  seen  to  be  involved  in  its  being  the  informing 
principle  of  active,  unitary  mind.1 

We  may  now  ask  whether  this  later  Rationalism  is  at  variance 
with  Berkeley's  early  idealism,  or  whether  it  merely  represents  the 
greater  elaboration  of  elements  already  contained  in  the  philosophy 
of  the  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge."  Accordingly,  let  us. 
retrace  our  steps,  delaying  for  a  moment  at  the  fourth  of  the  seven 
dialogues  entitled  "Alciphron,  or  the  Minute  Philosopher."  The 
series  of  arguments  here  put  forth  are  in  the  nature  of  rational  infer- 
ences from  the  various  sensations  with  which  we  are  affected,  pur- 
porting to  discover  to  us  that  the  '  Optic  Language'  we  before  con- 
sidered solely  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  arbitrariness  of  signs 
regarded  in  themselves  '  'hath  a  necessary  connexion  with  knowledge 
wisdom  and  goodness."  By  rational  inferences  from  the  acts,  ges- 
tures, and  speech  of  our  fellowmen  we  are  enabled  to  conclude  the 
existence  of  other  selves  conceived  in  analogy  with  our  own.  By 
parity  of  reasoning  the  sign  language  of  Nature  viewed  in  its  total- 
ity is  significant  of  a  Mind  upon  whom  Nature  is  constantly  de- 
pendent for  its  existence,  a  design  argument  being  supported  in 
maintenance  of  a  theistic  view.  Here  we  are  told,  in  anticipation 
of  Siris,  that  every  perception  of  an  object  involves  the  work  of 
rational  inference.  The  mere  signs  or  sensations  which,  like  the 
printed  words  of  a  page,  are,  in  their  own  Nature  of  small 
moment,  carry  the  attention  onward  to  the  very  things  signified  .  . 
which  in  truth  and  strictness  are  not  seen,  but  only  sug- 
gested and  apprehended  "  by  means  of  the  proper  objects  of  sight. 
We  have,  again,  the  doctrine  of  the  Theory  of  Vision,  with  a 
greater  insistance,  not  only  upon  the  insignificance  of  sensations 
regarded  in  themselves,  but  also  a  more  explicit  recognition  of  the 
function  of  mind   in   apprehending  the  object.      Likewise  the  cus- 

1  '  No  sooner  does  intellect  dawn  upon  the  shadowy  scene,  '  than  we  perceive 
the  true  principle  of  unity,  identity  and  existence.'  Those  things  which  before 
seemed  to  constitute  the  whole  of  being,  upon  taking  an  intellectual  view  of  things 
[i.  e.,  viewing  them  as  conceptions]  prove  to  be  but  fleeing  phantoms.' 

In  presence  of  such  declarations,  Professor  Fraser  declares  that  Berkeley  '  not 
only  was  not  a  sensualist  of  the  school  of  Condillac,  not  only  not  an  empiricist  of 
the  school  of  Hume,    but   he  was   a   transcendentalist  of  the  highest  and   purest 

school    of  Kant '      Cf.    also   Lewis:    "  The  History  of  Philosophy  from 

Thales  to  Comte,"  vol.  II,  pp.  304,  305. 


—  44  — 

tom-induced  association  between  sensations  takes  on  a  different 
coloring  now  from  that  observable  in  the  Theory  of  Vision,  and 
we  are  told  that  "there  must  be  time  and  experience,  by  repeated 
acts,  to  acquire  a  habit  of  knowing the  connexion  between  the  signs 
and  the  things  signified."  '  This  seems  in  essential  agreement  with 
a  passage  in  Siris2  which  states  that  "mind,  knowledge  and  notions, 
either  in  habit  or  in  act,  always  go  together."  That  habit  which 
is  unconsciously  rational  is  the  basis  of  our  immediate  perceptions 
of  the  phenomenal  object,  is  the  view  which  Berkeley  adopts  in 
"  Alciphron  "  and  later  urges  in  his  doctrine  of  the  immanence  of 
Reason  in  the  world  of  sense. 

Here  we  must  pause  for  the  moment,  since  it  is  plain  that  the 
negative  theory  of  the  "Principles"  and  the  dialogues  between  Hylas 
and  Philonous,  repeating  with  slight  variations  the  former  doctrine, 
can  offer  but  feeble  suggestion  of  the  rationalism  which  creeps  into 
"Siris"  through  the  dialogue  we  have  briefly  noticed.  There  thus 
arises  the  question  of  whether  "Alciphron"  and  "Siris"  should  not  be, 
together,regarded  as  representative  of  Berkeley's  later  thought,  while 
the  "  Theory  of  Vision, "  the  "Principles"  and  the  earlier  dialogues 
remain  to  vindicate  a  view  of  the  world  between  which  and  the 
later  idealism  there  is  little  or  no  connection.  The  lines  upon 
which  we  must  seek  an  answer  to  this  question  are  suggested  by 
the  further  inquiry  that  naturally  arises  from  the  preceeding,  viz. : 
how,  in  a  Philosophy  which  preached  Nominalism  at  the  outset, 
have  we  any  right  to  speak  of  rational  connections  and  the  domi- 
nance of  mind  in  a  universe  in  which  by  hypothesis  our  knowledge 
is  confined  to  particulars.  Accordingly  we  can  expect  to  find 
essential  agreement  between  these  two  seemingly  opposed  types  of 
philosophy  only  in  the  discovery  that  the  conceptual  processes 
implied  in  Berkeley's  later  theory  of  the  constitution  of  experience 
are  not  at  variance  with  the  earlier.  That  the  mind  and  its  acts 
make  us  aware  of  an  entirely  different  class  of  objects  from  the  mere 
sense  ideas,  we  are  told  in  "  Siris  "  ;  and  this  is  but  a  repetition  of 
§  89 3  of  the  ' '  Principles  "  in  which  we  learn  that  we  have  a  notion  of 
relations  between  things  or  ideas — which  relations  are  distinct  from 
the  ideas  or  things  related,  inasmuch  as  the  latter  may  be  perceived 
by  us  without  our  perceiving  the  former.  In  other  words,  the 
mind  by  its  acts  conceives  the  relations  between  things,  while  these 
latter  may  be  viewed  as  mere  particulars  apart  from  the  rational 
implications  that  are  throughout  contained  in  the  constitution  of 
the  object.  Thus  from  the  consideration  of  relations  between 
ideas,  which  has  so  far  in  this  chapter  occupied  our  attention,  we 

1  Fraser;  "Selections  from  Berkeley,"  p.  269. 

2  "Siris,"  §  309. 
sCf.,  p.  13 — note. 


—  45  — 

must  now  turn  to  the   '  notion  '  by  means  of  which  we  obtain  our 
knowledge  of  relations. 

2.         THE     NOTION     AND     ITS     OBJECTS. 

(a).     Meaning  of  'Notion.' 

In  the  section  on  abstract  ideas  we  endeavored  to  set  forth 
Berkeley's  distinction  between  ideas  in  the  sense  of  abstract  images, 
and  in  that  of  representative  notions.  All  ideas,  which  are,  in  one 
aspect, particular, — herein  consists  his  Nominalism — are  in  another 
aspect  representative  of  other  particulars, — and  in  this  consists  his 
Rationalism.  They  are  alike  abstractions  from  the  phenomenal 
object.  In  one  aspect  we  see  that  they  are  translatable  into  terms  of 
mind  as  percipient,  in  the  other  into  terms  of  mind  as  cognitive. 
In  any  case,  the  existence  of  the  object  involves  a  reference  to 
mind,  not  only  as  merely  perjipient,  but  as  cognitive. 

In  Berkeley's  early  idealism  we  have  seen  that  it  is  the  relation 
of  the  phenomenal  object  to  percipient  consciousness  that  is  chiefly 
insisted  upon.  The  percept  is  individualized,  resolved  into  its 
constituent  factors  by  means  of  its  discoverable  relation  to  con 
sciousness  in  so  far  as  the  latter  denotes  a  passive  experience — 
percipience.  At  this  stage  we  note  the  arbitrariness  of  the  relation 
between  phenomena  thus  particularized.  Why  this  particular 
atomic  element  of  consciousness  should  be  connected  with  that 
other  particular,  passive  experience,  does  not  appear.1  The  reason 
of  the  connection,  if  any  there  be,  has  been  lost  in  the  past  expe- 
rience of  the  individual  or  the  race,  in  the  course  of  which  such 
facility  has  been  gained  in  interpretation  of  this  Universal  Sign 
Language  that  the  necessity  of  its  origin  and  maintenance  in  Uni- 
versal Mind  is  neglected.  '1  he  sensations,  which  have  no  bond  in 
themselves,  since  they  serve  only  as  signs,  must  have  a  causal 
source  or  ground  in  which  the  reason  of  their  connection  can  be 
found,  a  source  that  is  independent  of  the  individual  will,  and  in 
which,  as  we  finally  learn  in  "Siris,"  we  can  only  participate  by 
means  of  the  universals  of  Reason. 

In  the  ' '  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge, "  Berkeley  recognized 
the  existence  of  these  universals;  for,  as  Mr.  Bradley2  has  said,  he 
knew  that  "  Relation  constitutes  the  universality  of  ideas."  Hence 
"  his  third  kind  of  existence, the  knowledge  of  which  is  given  us  by 
a  notion."  But,  as  the  same  author  further  says, Berkeley  does  not 
follow  up  the  'notion'  "because  blinded  by  the  ambiguity  of  the 
idea  derived  from  Locke."  Abstract  ideas  Berkeley  indeed  denies, 
— though  only,  as  we  have  said,  in  the  sense  of  abstract  images — 

Berkeley — Fraser  (Blackwood  Series),  p.  198. 

*C.  W.  Bradley;  "Berkeley's  Idealism,"  in  Journal  of  Speculative  Philos. 
1881-82. 


—  46  — 

for  every  idea  has  its  particular  aspect;  but  the  phenomenal  object 
likewise  retains  its  conceptual  character;  it  is  related  to  other 
things,  and  is  one  of  an  organic  whole  whose  several  parts  are 
interdependent  and  ultimately  imply  a  rational  nexus.  That  the 
unifying  bond  between  phenomena,  implied  in  the  recognition  of 
their  causal  source,  is  not  suggested  in  the  "  Principles  "  otherwise 
than  in  his  brief  acknowledgement  of  'relations,'  is  true;  but  it 
would  be  false  to  assert  that  Berkeley  had  no  basis  for  his  future 
rationalizing,  and  that  he  reached  his  later  philosophy  by  means 
of  the  abstractions  which  he  had  at  first  denied.  Nor  is  this  so 
inconsistent  with  a  statement  occurring  early  in  the  "Principles" 
and  which  seems  to  curtail  our  knowledge:  "  my  conceivingor  imag- 
ining power",  he  there  tells  us,  "  does  not  extend  beyond  the  possi- 
bility of  real  existence."  For,  as  we  have  endeavored  to  show,  by 
real  existence  Berkeley  never  means  the  mere  object  of  the  special 
senses,  but  the  percept J1  and  the  doctrine  of  "Alciphron, "  that 
"every  perception  implies  more  than  it  preceptively  intimates,"2  is 
but  the  development  of  a  view  for  which  he  was  already  prepared 
in  the  recognition  of  the  representative  character  belonging  to  all 
perception. 

To  repeat  in  brief  Berkeley's  theory  respecting  universals,  the 
percept,  or  phenomenal  object,  immediately  present  to  conscious- 
ness is,  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  referred  to  individual  conscious  ex- 
perience, resolvable  into  particulars.  Accordingly,  the  percept  is 
itself  particular,  and  likewise  all  general  notions  or  concepts  are 
particular,  since  by  reference  to  the  immediate  perceptual  charac- 
ter of  the  individual  consciousness  their  composite  nature  is  dis- 
covered. "  But  two  things  which  God  has  joined  together  cannot 
be  put  asunder  without  loss  to  both,"  and  if  we  cannot,  from  the 
foregoing,  abstract  the  object  from  sensation  and  ascribe  to  it  an 
existence  independent  of  conscious  experience,  neither  can  we 
hypostatize  mere  sensations  and  give  to  them  an  ultimate  reality 
which  we  deny  to  the  objective  consciousness  involved  in  the  im- 
mediate perception  of  things. 

From  the  third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous  it  may 
be  seen  that  a  possible  Humian  hypostatization  of  sensations  was 
present  to  Berkeley's  mind;  and  he  seems  there  struggling  to  free 
his  conception  of  the  self  from  the  crude  categories  in  which  it 
appears  clothed  in  the  Principles,  a  task  which  he  better  achieved 
in  Siris.  But  it  never  appeared  to  him  that  he  would  himself  be 
regarded  as  a  representative  of  sensationalism,  and  that,  in  exhib- 
iting the  necessary  relation  of  all  objects  to  the  percipient  con- 

1  Philosophy  of  Berkeley  in  "  The  Life,  Letters  and  Unpublished  Writings  of 
Berkeley,"  p.  371-372. 

2Wer.ley;  "British  Thought  and  Modern  Speculation,"  in  Scottish  Rev., 
Vol.  19,  p.  140.     - 


—  47  — 

sciousness,  he  had  debarred  himself  from  any  further  consideration 
of  those  universals  of  Reason,  upon  the  assumed  existence  of  which 
the  whole  of  his  later  theory  reposes.  To  hypostatize  universals  or 
notions,  in  other  words,  to  conceive  an  'abstract  idea'  that  cannot 
be  shown  to  bear  the  marks  which  signify  its  origination  in  indi- 
vidual experience,  is  an  impossibility.  While  on  the  other  hand, 
to  hypostatize  sensations,  to  regard  them  as  having  an  existence 
independent  of  the  relating  activity  of  mind,  is  again  to  commit 
that  fallacy  of  abstractly  conceiving  existence  to  which  it  was 
Berkeley's  purpose  to  call  attention.  That  particular  sensations 
are  of  themselves  insufficient  for  the  ultimate  explanation  of  our 
experience  of  an  objective  world,  Berkeley  acknowledges  in  the 
admission  that  "all  knowledge  and  demonstration  are  about  uni- 
versal notions."  Things  which,  regarded  in  themselves,  and  as 
mere  passive  objects  of  mind,  are  particular,  become  universal  by 
being  regarded  in  their  relation  to  mind  from  which  they  cannot 
ultimately  be  separated. 

In  the  second  edition  of  the  Principles1  we  are  told  that  there 
subsist  relations  between  things  and  that  these  relations  are  discov- 
erable by  means  of  the  'notion.'  The  notion,  we  are  also  told  in 
the  first  edition,  is  the  particular  in  its  representative  character,  not 
as  representative  of  anything  beyond  and  distinct  from  conscious- 
ness, but  representative  of  other  particulars  whose  sole  significance 
is  their  relation  to  conscious  mind.  Accordingly,  the  Berkelian  no- 
tion is  a  representative  image,2  the  obverse  of  the  particular  whose 
constituent  elements  are  discoverable  by  psychological  analysis; 
bul  this  representative  or  conceptual3  character  is  as  much  a  given 

!The  fact  that  this  statement  occurs  only  in  the  second  edition  of  the 
Principles  has  been  cited  as  proof  positive,  not  only  that  in  the  earliest  phase  of 
his  idealism  Berkeley  had  but  imperfectly  conceived  the  function  of  the  intellec- 
tual notion,  a  fact  readily  to  be  conceded;  but  it  has  also  been  held  to  denote  a 
more  fundamental  difference,  such  that  the  earlier  and  later  theories  could  not  have 
been  held  together  in  solution  by  Berkeley.  Such  objections  do  not  however  suf- 
ficiently explain  the  fact  that  in  the  second  edition  of  the  Principles,  published  in 
1732,  so  shortly  before  the  appearance  of  Siris,  the  empiricism  of  the  first  edition 
reappears  in  substantially  the  same  form  that  it  assumes  in  the  earlier.  Cf.  McCosh; 
"Locke's  Theory  of  Knowledge  with  a  notice  of  Berkeley"  in  "Criteria  of 
Truth." 

2 Representative  of  conscious  experience,  not  of  a  reality  independent  of  all 
consciousness  tor,  as  Lewes  says:  "Nothing  can  be  more  inaccurate  than  to  class 
Berkeley  among  those  who  maintain  ideas  to  be  representative  of  things:  ideas  he 
says  are  things.  Yet  Hamilton  commits  this  inaccuacy." — History  of  Philo.,  Vol. 
II,  p.  313,  note. 

3i.  e.,  1'he  concept  must  be  individualized.  "  Yet  this  rule,"  says  Mansel, 
('  Proleg.  Logica,'  pp.  23,  33,  quoted  by  Fraser  in  '  Selections,'  page  21,  note  2)," 
individualize  your  conceps  does  not  mean  sensationalize  them.  With  Berkeley, 
however,  as  we  have  seen,  it  does  mean  sensationalize  them,  although  this  does  not 
exclnde  the  representative  character  of  ihe  concept.  For:  "  a  blurred  picture  is 
just  as  much  a  single  mental  fact  as  a  sharp  picture  is;  and  the  use  ot  either  picture 


—  48  — 

fact  of  consciousness  as  the  particular  image  which  in  one  aspect 
it  is  seen  to  be.  The  particular  only  exists  with  reference  to  the 
universal,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  universal  has  no  abstract 
existence  apart  from  the  particular.  For  this  reason  Professor 
Fraser's  contention  that  Berkeley  makes  ideas  objective,  rather  than 
things  subjective, 'seems  to  be  borne  out  even  in  the  earlier  theory, 
"lam  not  for  changing  things  into  ideas,  bat  rather  ideas  into 
things,"  says  Berkeley;  "since  those  immediate  objects  of  percep- 
tion, which,  according  to  you,  *are  only  appearances  of  things,  I 
take  to  be  the  real  things  themselves  " 

Judging  from  his  early  statements  with  regard  to  the  notion, 
and  from  the  subsequent  part  which  they  play  in  his  later  idealism, 
it  does  not  seem  that  such  statements  of  the  realistic  position  he 
wished  to  defend  should  be  taken  merely  as  an  attempt  to  square  a 
subjective  idealism  with  the  common  sense  conviction  that  there  is 
an  external  world  which  is  for  its  existence  independent  of  the  in- 
dividual consciousness.  For  Berkeley,  the  objectivity  of  ideas 
and  relations  between  ideas  was  guaranteed,  ( i  )  by  throughout 
maintaining  that,  in  showing  the  subjective  reference  which  any 
phenomenon  has,    he   is  not  thereby   destroying  the   independent 

by  the  mind  to  symbolize  a  whole  class  of  individuals  is  a  new  mental  function,'1'' 
(James:  "Psych.,"  vol.  II,  p  49).  In  other  words:  the  "Mind,  her  acts  and  fac- 
ulties, furnish  a  new  and  distinct  class  of  objects,"  (cited  above,  "Siris,''  §  247)  or 
'  notions,'  and  the  notion  is  just  this  '  blurred  picture,'  not  in  its  character  as  re 
solvable  into  its  constituents  in  the  individual  consciousness,  but  in  the  use  which 
the  mind  makes  of  it.  To  quote  from  an  article  of  recent  date,  (Dr.  A. 
K.  Rogers'  "  Epistemology  and  Experience:"  Philos.  Rev.,  Sept.,  1898).  "The 
concept  has  existence  only  as  a  tool,  a  method.  It  is  not  any  element  of  expe- 
rience as  an  existence,  but  simply  the  way  we  use  that  particular  element  which  we 
call  the  image.  Accordingly,  the  concept,  the  universal  as  such  does  not  enter 
into  reality  at  all  except  in  its  functional  use.  It  is  quite  impossible  that  anything 
should  exist  in  general." 

Now  I  think  Berkeley  would  say,  this  functional  use  of  the  concept  in  expe- 
rience must  be  justified,  and  we  find  its  justification  in  the  representative  image;  for, 
in  the  latter,  this  functional  use  of  the  concept,  this  reference  beyond  the  mere 
particulars  of  which  the  representative  image  is  composed  is  a  given  fact  of  expe- 
rience. The  dynamic  representative  character  of  the  concept  or  'notion,'  the  ref- 
erence forward  to  other  reality  than  itself,  is  as  much  a  fact,  seized  and  transfixed, 
and  thus  justified  in  experience,  as  its  static  character — which  is  its  natural  history 
and  the  description  of  its  particular,  constituent,  psychic  factors — and  experience 
cannot  be  other  than  it  takes  itself  to  be. 

The  representative  'image  or  notion'  is  thus  a  go-between  in  two  phases  of 
oar  attitude  toward  reality.  As  representative  it  is  functionally  active  as  the  con- 
cept; as  static,  passive,  translatable  into  terms  of  the  individual  consciousness,  it  is 
composite  and  thus  resolvable  into  particulars.  As  concept  it  is  ideally  predicable 
in  the  judgment  but  this  predication,  though  ideal,  finds  its  justification  in  the  fact 
that  the  sense  datum  which  forms  the  subject  of  judgment  is  also  ideal  and  in  the 
unitariness  of  the  representative  image  are  the  two  made  one. 

Thus,  beneath  the  surface  contradiction  which  appears  in  many  parts  of 
Berkeley's  philosophy  the  divergent  lines  of  Siris  and  the  Principles  meet  in  a  com- 
mon focus — the  doctrine  of  the   'notion.' 


—  49  — 

character  of  the  object,  since  objectivity  is  a  given  fudamental 
fact  of  consciousness;  (2)  by  the  presence  in  consciousness  of 
universals  or  'notions.'  In  denying  the  existence  of  abstract  no- 
tions,2 i.  e.,  in  the  discovery  that  the  notion  always  involves  a  re- 
lation to  sense  perception  Berkeley  had  vindicated  the  reality  of 
the  notion  and  thus  the  objectivity  of  the  relations  which  form  its 
content  by  the  direct  evidence  of  the  perceptual  consciousness. 
For  the  content  of  the  notion  is,  he  tell  us,  relations,  relations 
which  at  any  rate  appear  objective,  and  since  the  notion  is,  in  its 
individual  character,  as  the  image,  experiential,  the  objectivity  of 
relations  is  directly  evinced  by  consciousness;  for — to  use  Professor 
Royce's  language  experience  cannot  be  other  than  it  takes  itself 
to  be.  In  other  words,  Berkeley  asserts  a  common  sense  realism,'2 
resting  the  existence  of  universals  upon  the  direct  testimony  of 
consciousness.  His  realism  is  not,  however,  a  copy  theory,  for 
there  is  nothing  foreign  to  consciousness  of  which  the  idea  can  be 
the  copy,  and  in  this  respect  it  is  idealism. 

In  the  third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Phylonous,  the  notion 
in  the  guise  of  the  archetype  plays  a  more  prominent  part  than  in 
the  "Principles,"  and  likewise  the  objectivity  of  ideas  is  further  in- 
sisted upon.  While  in  the  later  work  we  find  Berkeley  denying  the 
existence  of  abstract  matter,  for  the  reason  that  the  existence  of  a 
thing  cannot  be  abstracted  from  the  perception  of  it,  we  here  find 
him  using  the  same  argument  in'  support  of  the  objectivity  of 
things  or  ideas  to  mind,  for  "that  a  thing  should  be  really  perceived 
by  my  consciousness  and  at  the  same  time  not  really  exist  is  to  me 
a  plain  contradiction,  since  I  cannot  prescind  or  abstract,  even  in 
thought,  the  existence  of  a  sensible  thing  from  its  being  per- 
ceived." 

In  "Siris"  we  receive  further  insight  into  the  doctrine  of  the 
objectivity  of  ideas,  which,  from  his  now  complete  recognition  of 
the  immanence  of  reason,  one  would  expect  to  find  him  regard  as 
active  in  their  objective  aspect.  And  so  it  is,  for  he  there  says 
that  sensible  qualities  are  to  be  regarded  as  acts  only  in  the  cause, 
and  as  passions  in  us.  In  Siris  also3  Berkeley  favors  a  doctrine  of 
'innate  notions,'  although,  as  he  tells  us,  it  is  different  from  that 
which  is  favored  by  the  moderns,  doubtless  meaning  the  abstract 
idea  of  Locke  as  well  as  the  innate  idea  of  Descartes.  For  the 
'  innate  notion  '  Berkeley  describes  as  having  a  potential  existence: 

1  It  is  the  emptiness  of  the  abstract  universal  as  well  as  its  unimaginableness 
against  which  Berkeley  declaims — the  unschematized  category.  But  Berkeley  had 
no  dualism  as  had  Kant — no  violent  severing  of  sense-given  impressions  from  the 
activity  of  thought. 

2Cf.  Wenley — British  Thought  and  Modern  Speculation,  p.  148  of  Scottish 
Rev.,  vol.  19. 

3  Siris  §  308-309-315. 


—  50  — 

it  is  connate  rather  than  innate.  The  finite  mind  or  self,  by  par- 
ticipation in  the  Divine  Mind,  possesses  the  power  of  reflection 
and  of  originating  its  own  products,  the  notions;  but  since  this 
reflection  is  employed  upon  sense  phenomena,  which  are  not  by 
nature  foreign  to  Mind,  the  notion  amounts  to  an  active  synthesis 
of  this  given  material,  and  is  thus  for  Berkeley  constitutive,  or  to 
express  it  more  nearly  in  Berkeley's  Platonic  language,  by  means 
of  the  notion  we  rediscover  the  universal  creative  '  form '  of  the 
Divine  Reason  immanent  in  sense. 

( b )     Notion  of  Self  and  God. 

Parallel  to  Berkeley's  theory  of  a  notion  of  relations  there  also 
develops  his  'notion'  of  the  Self  and  God.  With  regard  to  our 
knowledge  of  Self  it  is  again  Locke  who  furnishes  a  point  of 
departure  for  Berkeley's  theory.  The  former,  in  close  imitation  of 
Descartes,  had  said1  that  "as  for  our  own  existence  we  perceive  it 
so  plainly,  that  it  neither  needs  nor  is  capable  of  any  proof.     For 

nothing  can  be  more  evident  to  us  than  our  own  existence 

Experience  convinces  us  that  we  can  have  an  intuitive  knowledge 
of  our  own  existence,  and  an  internal  infallible  perception  that  we 
are.  In  every  act  of  sensation,  reasoning,  or  thinking  we  are  con- 
scious to  ourselves  of  our  own  being;  and  in  this  matter  come  not 
short  of  the  highest  degree  of  certainty." 

Apparently  in  entire  agreement  with  this,  Berkeley  sets  out 
with  a  intuitional  view  of  the  self.  Such  passages  as  the  following 
appear  in  considerable  profusion  throughout  his  earlier  philosophi- 
cal works,  and  demonstrate  his  inability  to  free  himself  from  an 
apparent  necessity  of  giving  to  his  conception  of  the  self  an  empir- 
ical setting.  In  the  "  Principles"  he  says  that  "we  comprehend 
our  own  existence  by  inward  feeling  or  reflection,  and  that  of  other 
spirits  by  reason."2  Likewise,  in  the  third  dialogue  between 
Hylas  and  Philonous:  "I  do  nevertheless  know  that  I  who  am  a 
spirit  or  thinking  substance,  exist  as  certainly  as  I  know  my  ideas 
exist.  Further,  I  know  what  I  mean  by  the  terms  I  and  myself, 
and  I  know  this  i?nmediately  or  intuitively,  though  I  do  not  perceive 
it  as  I  perceive  a  triangle,  a  color,  or  a  sound."  By  such  state- 
ments Berkeley  not  only  laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  having 
attempted  to  ground  his  metaphysic  upon  a  psychological  theory 
of  the  self — a  view  which  a  consistent  application  of  his  own  empir- 
ical principles  would  destroy;  for,  as  Hume  afterward  showed,  the 
permanence  of  the  I,  as  given  in  perception,  is  not  a  real  perma- 
nence— but  he  apparently  sought  to  reinstate,  notwithstanding  his 

Locke's  Essay,  Book  IV,  ch.  ix-3. 
2  "Principles,"  §  89. 


_  5 1  — 

Nominalism,    a  'substance'   theory  fully  as   unacceptable  as  that 
of  Locke. 

Early  in  the  Principles  this  category  of  substance  appears;  yet  it 
occurs  rather  as  a  foil  to  the  Cartesian  substance  than  as  a  principle 
of  explanation  to  which  the  author  attached  any  positive  significance 
— a  category  nearest  at  hand  to  envisage  the  active  principle  which, 
by  the  extension  of  its  activity,  was  to  supplant  passive  matter.  We 
have  no  mediaeval  discussion  of  faculties,  no  question  is  raised  as 
to  the  relation  of  a  soul  substance  to  a  divine  spirit  substance,  nor 
are  we  told  anything  about  the  attributes  of  this  substance.  On  the 
contrary — in  speaking  of  the  perception  of  the  qualities  of  bodies — 
he  says  that  these  qualities  are  in  the  mind  only  as  they  are  per- 
ceived by  it — that  is,  not  by  way  of  mode  or  attribute,  but  only  by 
way  of  'idea.'  Following  the  passage  just  quoted,  Berkeley  pro- 
ceeds to  draw  the  conclusion  that  the  soul  does  not  possess  'quali- 
ties.' Subject,  mode,  and  attribute, of  the  philosophers  are  discarded 
as  unintelligible  terms;  and  this  he  illustrates  in  the  case  of  a 
material  object.1 

The  paralogism  involved  in  the  attempt  to  explain  the  self  by 
means  of  the  materialistic  category  of  substance  certainly  appeared 
to  Berkeley.  In  the  first  place  they  would,  of  necessity,  occur  to 
him  in  the  distinction  which  he  set  up  between  spirits  and  ideas. 
The  latter,  as  merely  passive  existences,  have  nothing  in  common 
with  spirit  but  the  general  name  Being.  This  distinction  is  intro- 
duced among  the  reflections  of  the  Commonplace  Book:  "Things 
are  two  fold,"  he  tells  us — "active  or  inactive."  The  existence  of 
active  things  is  to  act,  of  inactive  to  be  'perceived.'  There  being 
nothing  in  common  between  these  two  heterogeneous  kinds  of  exis- 
tences, the  former,  the  active  relational  principle,  mind  or  spirit,  can- 
not be  adequately  expressed  in  terms  of  passive  ideas.  Accordingly, 
in  spite  of  a  seemingly  bold  assertion  that  'we  assuredly  have  an 
idea  of  substance,'  we  read  its  qualification  in  the  statements  which 
follow:  "The  substance  of  body  we  know.  The  substance  of  Spirit 
we  do  not  know — it  not  being  knowable,  it  being  a  purus  actus." 
Now  by  the  'substance  of  body,'  Berkeley,  as  we  have  seen, 
means  nothing  else  than  the  sensible  object,  involving  indeed 
thought-relations  if  we  read  him  aright,  but  never  abstract  sub- 
stance. Likewise  any  knowledge  of  spirit  as  substance  is  here 
denied. 

In  the  Principles  and  in  the  earlier  dialogues,  the  category  of 
substance  occurs  in  connection  with  his  various  other  characteri- 
zations of  mind  or  spirit.  In  the  third  of  these  dialogues,2  after 
speaking  of  the  'I  as  a  spirit'  or   'thinking  substance,'  he  goes  on 

1  "  Principles,"   §49. 

z  "  Philonous"  3d  dialogue,  §5. 


V- 


—  52  — 

to  say:  "The  Mind,  Spirit  or  Soul,  is  that  indivisible,  unextended 
thing  which  thinks,  acts,  and  perceives.  I  say  indivisable,  because 
unextended;  and  unextended  because  extended,  figured,  moveable 
things  are  ideas;"  and  that  which  perceives  ideas,  which  thinks  and 
wills,  is  plainly  itself  no  idea,  nor  like  an  idea  ....  I  do  not 
therefore  say  my  soul  is  an  idea,  or  like  an  idea."  These  state- 
ments do  not  seem  to  be  a  return  to  scholastic  discussions  as  to 
the  possible  existence  of  a  spirit  substance,  stripped  of  all  the  rela- 
tions by  which  substance  or  matter  is  perceptively  known  to  us. 
They  appear  rather  to  indicate  the  predominant  thought  in  Berke- 
ley's mind,  that  neither  the  sense  qualities  nor  substance  which 
exists  only  in  presence  of  these  qualities  can  be  adduced  in  sup- 
port of  a  kind  of  existence  which  is,  in  itself,  unknowable.  Only 
a  negative  signification  is  assigned  to  substance; '  and  Berkeley, 
whenever  he  is  driven  to  an  explanation  of  the  self  or  the  objective 
Spirit  which  for  him  takes  the  place  of  matter,  has  recourse  to  the 
'active,  thinking  principle,'  a  knowledge  of  which  is  had  by  means 
of  the  notion. 

After  denying  the  possibility  of  our  having  an  idea  either  of 
the  self  or  of  God,  he  proceeds  to  give  a  reason  for  his  insistence 
that  we  have,  if  not  an  idea,  at  least  some  knowledge,  of  Spirit. 
In  reply  to  Hylas'  objection  that  even  if  abstract  matter  be  disal- 
lowed, there  may  yet  be  "some  third  nature  distinct  from  Matter 
and  Spirit" — "for  what  reason  is  there  why  you  should  call  it 
Spirit"? — Berkeley  in  effect  says  that  there  can  be  no  via  mediabe- 
tween  matter  and  spirit,  no  unica  substantia'2  for  as  "I  have  a  mind 
to  have  some  notion  of  meaning  in  what  I  say  .  .  .  when  I  speak 
of  an  active  being,  I  am  obliged  to  mean  spirit."  Activity  can  be 
ascribed  only  to  that  which  has  ideas  and  possesses  the  power  of 
'  combining  and  relating '  those  ideas,  or  to  that  which  creates  ideas. 

If  L  may  be  allowed  to  quote  farther,  at  considerable  length, 
from  the  dialogue  we  have  been  considering,  the  following  may  be 
taken  as  illustrative  of  the  position  at  which  Berkeley  has  thus  far 
arrived  with  regard  to  a  knowledge  of  the  self  and  God.  Though 
we  have  no  idea  of  spirit,  yet  "taking  the  word  idea  in  a  large 
sense,  my  soul  may  be  said  to  furnish  me  with  an  «idea  [notion], 
that  is,  an  image  or  likeness  of  God— though  indeed  extremely  in- 
adequate. For  all  the  notion  I  have  of  God  is  obtained  by  reflect- 
ing on  my  own  soul,  heightening  its  powers,  and  removing  its  im- 
perfection."3    in  this  we  seem  to  obtain  some  hint   of  Berkeley's 


1  Lewis,  in  his  History  of  Philosophy  (Berkeley)  holds  to  the  extreme  of 
this  substance-interpretation  ol  Berkeley.  He  tells  us  that  his  '-idealism  is  at 
bottom  the  much  decried  system  of  Spinoza,  who  taught  that  there  was  but  one 
essence  in  the  universe,  and  that  one  Substance." 

2cf.  Fraser;  Berkeley,  Blackwood  Philos.  Classics,  p.  201. 

3 Third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous.     Wales — Vol. 


—  53  — 

later  doctrine  of  Personality,  God  appearing  to  be  for  him  the 
completion  of  the  finite  self.  He  further  describes  this  sort  of 
knowledge  in  the  following  terms:  "I  have,  therefore,  though  not 
an  inactive  idea,  yet  in  myself  some  sort  of  an  active  thinking 
image  of  the  Deity.  And  though  I  perceive  Him  not  by  sense, 
yet  I  have  a  notion  of  him,  or  know  him  by  reflection  and  reason- 
ing. " l 

To  this  statement  of  Philonous,  Hylas,  the  materialist,  objects. 
"You  say,"  he  remarks,  '"'your  own  soul  supplies  you  with  some  sort 
of  an  idea  or  image  of  God.  But,  at  the  same  time,  you  acknowl- 
edge you  have,  properly  speaking,  no  idea  of  your  own  soul.  .  .  . 
To  act  consistently,  you  must  either  admit  Matter  or  reject  Spirit." 
"Philonous  thus  replies,  "I  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  I  do  not 
deny  the  existence  of  material  substance,  merely  because  I  have 
no  notion  of  it,  but  because  the  notion  of  it  is  inconsistent;  or,  in 
other  words,  because  it  is  repugnant  that  there  should  be  a  notion 
of  it.  Many  things,  for  ought  I  know,  may  exist,  whereof  neither 
I  nor  any  other  man  hath  or  can  have  any  idea  or  notion  whatso- 
ever. But  then  those  things  must  be  possible,  that  is,  nothing  in- 
consistent must  be  included  in  their  definition.  I  say,  secondly, 
that  although  we  believe  things  to  exist  which  we  do  not  perceive, 
yet  we  may  not  believe  that  any  particular  thing  exists,  without 
some  reason  for  such  belief;  but  I  have  no  reason  for  believing  the 
existence  of  matter.  I  have  no  immediate  intuition  thereof:  neither 
can  I  immediately  from  my  sensations,  ideas,  notions,  actions,  or 
passions,  infer  an  unthinking,  unperceiving,  inactive  Substance — 
either  by  probable  deduction  or  necessary  consequence.  'Whereas 
the  being  of  my  Self,  that  is,  my  own  soul,  mind,  or  thinking  prin- 
ciple, I  evidently  know  by  reflection It  is  granted  we  have 

neither  an  immediate  evidence  nor  a  demonstrative  knowledge  of 
the  existence  of  other  finite  spirits;  but  it  will  not  thence  follow 
that  such  spirits  are  on  a  foot  with  material  substances:  if  to  sup- 
pose the  one  be  inconsistent,  and  it  be  not  inconsistent  to  suppose 
the  other;  if  the  one  can  be  inferred  by  no  argument,  and  there  is 
a  probability  for  the  other.  ...  I  say,  lastly,  that  I  have  a  notion 
of  Spirit,  though  I  have  not,  strictly  speaking,  an  idea  of  it.  I  do 
not  perceive  it  as  an  idea,  or  by  means  of  an  idea,  but  know  it  by 
reflection. " 

In  the  above  we  have  not  only  Berkeley's  second  and  positive 
disproof  of  abstract  matter — the  first  and  negative  disproof  being 
grounded  on  the  fact  that  its  existence  is  not  supported  by  the  evi- 
dence of  immediate  perception — but,  what  is  here  to  our  purpose, 
his  reasons  for  substituting  spirit  for  abstract  matter. 

We  may  put  the  case   briefly  thus:     We   can  have  no  idea  of 

1  "Third  Dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous." 


—  54  — 

spirit,  but  only  a  notion  or  conception  of  it.  We  have  neither  an 
idea  of  abstract  matter  nor  can  we  conceive  its  existence.  The 
notion  of  matter  is  self-contradictory  because,  being  conceived  as 
passive,  we  may  demand  that  the  notion  of  it  shall  be  realized  in 
the  form  of  passive  existence,  or  ideas,  and  this  demand  it  cannot 
fulfill — or  if  it  does,  it  at  once  becomes  idea,  and  then  Berkeley 
asks:  why  reduplicate  existence  and  attempt  to  think  matter  other- 
wise than  as  it  is  revealed  to  us  in  the  percipient  consciousness  ? 
The  notion  of  matter  is  thus  inadequate  to  its  objective  existence. 
If  it  be  replied  that  matter  is  active,  produces,  brings  about  effects, 
Berkeley  would  say  that  the  notion  of  activity  is  indentical  with 
the  notion  of  spirit;  for  as  soon  as  you  attempt  to  conceive  it  as 
matter,  you  make  it  passive,  i.  e.,  idea,  and  thus  destroy  activity. 
If  then  you  attempt  to  conceive  matter  in  itself,  as  an  absolute  ex- 
istence apart  from  spirit,  you  must  admit  that  it  must  stand  on  its 
own  merit,  i.  e.,  as  passivity,  and  thus,  again,  it  is  idea. 

The  notion  of  spirit,  however,  though  '  inadequate '  in  so  far 
as  we  attempt  to  characterize  it  by  conceptions  borrowed  from 
passive  ideas,  is  not  inconsistent;  for  the  conception  of  spirit  does 
not  demand  that  it  shall  be,  in  its  absolute  nature,  expressed  in 
terms  of  ideas,  but  that  these  shall  only  signify  or  represent  spirit- 
ual activity,  which  is  by  hypothesis  different  from  ideas.  Thus  we 
must,  from  the  very  notion  of  matter,  demand  a  complete  knowl- 
edge of  what  it  is,  and  it  is  thus  inadequate  to  the  form  of  repre- 
sentation which  its  conception  requires;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  notion  of  spirit  is  less  inadequate  inasmuch  as  it  only  requires 
a  medium  for  the  expression  of  itself,  viz,  notions  or  representa- 
tions. We  may  accordingly  be  forced  to  content  ourselves  with  a 
relative  knowledge  of  mind  or  spirit,  a  '  probability,'  as  Berkeley 
expresses  it,  but  of  matter  we  can  have  no  knowledge,  except  as  a 
mind-dependent  existence. 

The  passages  which  I  have  transcribed  from  Berkeley's  dia- 
logue do  not  seem  to  me  to  indicate  a  sole  reliance  upon  the  em- 
pirical self  in  support  of  his  idealistic  hypothesis.  In  the  self  or 
'  thinking  principle  '  which  '  I  evidently  know  by  reflection  '  there 
is  implied  the  thought  of  an  activity  of  relation  of  which  we  are 
made  aware  not  only  by  its  empirical  manifestations  but,  also  by 
the  universals  of  reason  or  'notions.'  Berkeley,  as  we  have  before 
said,  does  not  think  of  instituting  a  Kantian  inquiry  into  the  prin- 
ciples which  must  be  presupposed  in  the  constitution  of  experience 
in  order  to  render  it  possible.  Before  Kant's  question  could  arise 
there  was  needed  Hume's  misinterpretation  of  Berkeley's  'spirit 
substance  '  and  the  subsequent  disintegration  of  the  self  into  ab- 
stract sensations.  By  Kant  the  self  was  to  be  rediscovered, 
although  the  foreign  '  Somewhat '  against  which  Berkeley  so  vigor- 
ously contended  reappeared  in  the  guise  of  a  ding-an-sich,  thus  oc- 


—  55  — 

casioning  the  transformation  of  the  self  from  an  ontological  into 
an  epistemological  unity.  Berkeley,  on  the  other  hand,  who  by 
his  less  critical  and  easier  method,  had  seized  upon  Locke's  com- 
bining activity  of  mind,  by  extending  the  scope  of  its  activity 
from  the  small  sphere  to  which  the  latter  had  confined  it,  viz.,  ideas 
of  reflection,  gradually  transforms  it  into  the  self,  which,  by  par- 
ticipation in  the  Infinite  Self,  or  God,  is  constitutive  of  the  rela- 
tions that  are  througout  implied  in  all  phenomenal  objects. 

"  At  the  first  thought  it  seems  altogether  incongruous  and  un- 
seemly to  connect  Kant  or  his  speculation  with  Berkeley  and  his 
philosophy and  yet  the  two  are  more  nearly  con- 
nected than  at  first  sight  would  seem  to  be  possible,  not  merely  by 
their  historic  connection  through  Hume  under  the  law  of  action 
and  reaction,  but  by  the  problem  with  which  both  grappled  so 
earnestly,  although  their  solutions  vary  so  widely.  We  find  them 
in  certain  particulars  nearer  than  we  should  at  first  have  suspected. 
The  matter  which  Berkeley  so  passionately  rejects  while  he  retains 
the  sensations  which  are  all  we  know,  is,  as  he  conceives  it,  not 
greatly  unlike  the  Ding-an-sich  which  Kant  so  pertinaciously 
ignores,  while  he  accepts  the  phenomena,  which  somehow  he  holds 
to  be  its  representation.  The  time  and  space  which  Kant  acknowl- 
edges as  the  forms  and  only  as  the  forms  of  our  direct  knowledge 
affirmed  or  presumed — of  sense  experiences  by  an  a  priori  neces- 
sity, are  accepted  by  Berkeley  as  a  priori  relations,  because  neces- 
sarily involved  in  the  continued  activity  of  God.  Kant's  catego- 
ries of  our  generalized  thinking  are  matched  by  Berkeley's  original 
notions  of  relations  between  ideas  which  are  discerned  and 
affirmed  directly  by  the  mind.  The  ideas,  however,  which  Kant 
beheld  as  shivering  ghosts  through  the  midst  of  his  timid  scepti- 
cism, and  which  he  was  forced  to  recognize  as  real  by  a  faith  which 
he  could  only  say  was  a  make-believe — of  God,  the  soul,  and  the 
cosmos, — these  were  to  Berkeley  the  pillars  and  foundation  of  his 
philosophic  faith.  While  Kant  finds  in  conscience  the  command 
to  believe  in  God,  because  God  is  needed  as  a  chief  of  police  for 
the  moral  universe,  Berkeley  finds  in  God  the  personal  foundation 
and  enforcer  of  duty,  because  duty  is  the  voice  of  reason  and 
goodness,  which  are  but  other  names  for  the  thoughts  and  actings 
of  God." 

We  have  endeavored  to  show  that  the  self  of  Berkeley  is  but 
poorly  understood  if  one  fastens  upon  the  category  of  substance 
as  indicative  of  his  deeper  thought  or  last  word  about  the  matter. 
His  unwillingness  to  apply  the  category  of  '  substance,'  and  his 
recognition  that  •  being'  is  an  inadequate  concept  by  which  to  ex- 
press the  self,  appear  in  a  few  passages  in  his  Commonplace  Book. 
There  he  says,  with  regard  to  the  objective  source  of  ideas  of 
sense:    "there  is  a  being  which   wills   these  perceptions  in  us,"  to 


—  56  — 

which  he  adds:  "  It  should  be  said,  nothing  but  a  Will — a  being 
which  wills  being  unintelligible."1  Likewise  he  seems  to  disallow 
the  hypostalization  of  Will  or  Understanding,  either  as  modes  of 
a  substance,  or  as  faculties  in  abstraction  from  the  self  of  which 
they  are  different  forms  of  manifestation:  "I  must  not  say  that 
will  or  understanding  is  all  one,  but  that  they  are  both  abstract 
ideas,  i.  e. ,  none  at  all — they  not  being  even  ratione  different  from 
the  spirit,  qua  faculties,  or  active."2  Again:  Thought  itself,  or 
thinking,  is  no  idea.  "'Tis  an  act,  i.  e.,  volition,  as  contradistin- 
guished to  effects — the  Will."3  Further  in  his  account  of  the  per- 
ception of  objects,  Berkeley  says,  in  a  passage  already  noted  in 
another  connection:  "when  I  speak  of  objects  as  existing  in  the 
mind,  or  imprinted  on  the  senses,  I  would  not  be  understood  in 
the  gross  literal  sense — as  when  bodies  are  said  to  exist  in  a  place, 
or  a  seal  to  make  an  impression  on  wax.  My  meaning  is  only  that 
the  minds  comprehends  or  perceives  them."  4 

On  the  whole  it  does  not  seem  that  he  has  much  thought  of 
pressing  the  analogy  of  material  substance  upon  his  '  active  prin- 
ciple.' Although  ideas,  in  so  far  as  they  are  regarded  apart  from 
the  relating  mind,  are  passive,  and  although  as  coming  from  a 
source  foreign  to  the  finite  mind,  the  latter  is  receptive  with  regard 
to  them;  yet  ideas  in  themselves,  having  no  connexion  or  identity 
with  one  another,  have  a  meaning  for  the  finite  mind  only  in  so  far 
as  the  latter  possesses  the  relating  activity  which  is  necessary  for 
the  interpretation  of  these  significant  signs  into  a  rational  lan- 
guage. Thus  the  mind  is  not  a  mere  tabula  rasa,  a  substance-vehi- 
cle for  conveying  into  the  empirical  consciousness  a  world  of 
ready  made  perceptions;  on  the  contrary,  in  so  far  as  empirical 
perception  is  present,  there  is  implied  the  work  of  rational  activ- 
ity, without  which  experience  would  be  impossible.  The  finite 
mind  can  interpret  the  language  of  the  Author  of  Nature  only  so 
far  as  it  possesses  the  capability  of  interpretation,  i.  e.,  as  it  shares 
the  rational  activity  which  is  at  the  heart  of  experience. 

With  respect  to  the  identity  of  the  finite  mind  or  self,  Berke- 
ley is  eminently  unsuccessful,  at  least  in  his  early  philosophy. 
The  question  thus  appears  to  him  in  the  "Commonplace  Book": 
"Wherein  consists  the  identity  of  persons?  Not  in  actual  con- 
sciousness, for  then  I'm  not  the  same  person  I  was  this  day  twelve- 
months but  while  I  think  of  what  I  did  then.  Not  in  potential, 
for  then  all  persons   may   be  the  same  for  aught  I  know."5     Here 

1  "Life  Letters  and  Unpublished  Writings  of  Berkeley,"  p.  430. 
2Fraser;  ''Commonplace  Book"  in  "Life,  letters,  etc.,"  p.  466. 

3  Ibid,  p.  460.' 

4  "  Third  Dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonious." 

5Fraser;  "Commonplace  Book,"  in  "Life,  letters,  etc.,"  p.  481. 


—  57  — 

he  seems  to  rely  solely  upon  memory  as  the  bond  of  connection 
between  past  and  present  states  of  consciousness;  and  its  inade- 
quacy as  an  explanation  of  any  other  than  empirical  identity  he 
could  have  seen  if  he  had  but  applied  the  principles  of  associa- 
tional  psychology  which  he  himself  set  afoot. 

In  the  third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous  he  seems 
to  foresee  Hume's  subsequent  procedure  with  regard  to  the  self. 
Hylas  says  in  reply  to  the  long  speech  of  Philonous  which  we  have 
quoted:  "  Notwithstanding  all  you  have  said  .  .  .  .  and  in  conse- 
quence of  your  own  principles,  it  should  follow  that  you  are  only 
a  system  of  floating  ideas,  without  any  substance  to  support  them. 
Words  are  not  to  be  used  without  a  meaning  in  spiritual  substance 
more  than  in  material  substance;  the  one  is  to  be  exploded  as  well 
as  the  other,"1  for  "the  murder  of  matter  is  the  suicide  of  the  mind." 
This  objection,  suggestive  of  his  Commonplace  Book,  in  which 
Berkeley  says  that  "  the  very  existence  of  idea  constitutes  the 
Soul  "  2  which  is  a  mere  'congeries  of  perceptions,'  is  answered  as 
follows:  "I  know  or  am  conscious  of  my  own  being,  and  that  I 
myself  am  not  my  ideas,  but  somewhat  else,  a  thinking,  active 
principle  which  perceives,  knows,  wills  and  operates  about  ideas. 
I  know  that  I,  one  and  the  same  self,  perceive  both  colors  and 
sonnds:  that  a  color  cannot  perceive  a  sound,  nor  a  sound  a  color: 
that  I  am  therefore  one  individual  principle,  distinct  from  color 
and  sound;  and  for  the  same  reason,  from  all  other  sensible  things 
and  inert  ideas.  But,  I  am  not  in  like  manner  conscious  of  the 
existence  or  essence  of  Matter."3  Now  from  this  statement  that 
the  self  is  an  individual  principle,  distinct  from  ideas,  and  the  pre- 
ceding assertion  that  'Mind  is  a  congeries  of  perceptions,'  it 
seems  that  Blakeley  contemplated  a  distinction  between  an  empiri- 
cal and  a  rational  self,  although  the  distinction  is  far  from  being 
explicitly  pointed  out. 

In  the  Commonplace  book  he  regards  the  person  as  immortal, 
while  he  denies  immortality  to  the  soul,  by  which  he  evidently 
means  the  self  in  its  individual  or  empirical  aspect.  Berkeley's 
theory  of  personality  is  a  later  development  of  his  philosophy,  in 
the  progress  of  which  he  has  come  to  place  increasing  reliance 
upon  the  notion,  rather  than  upon  mere  intuition.  But  if,  in  his 
early  theory,  he  fails  to  distinguish  clearly  between  the  empirical 
self  as  a  mere  congeries  of  perceptions,  and  the  rational  activity 
which  renders  possible  an  interpretation  of  the  sign  language  of 
Nature,  in  the  later  philosophy  of  Siris  there  is  a  tendency  to  lose 
the  identity  of  the  self  in  Universal  Mind.      He  now  verges  upon 

1  "Third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous." 

2Fraser;  "Commonplace  Book,"  "Life,  letters,  etc.,"  p.  43S. 

3  "Third  dialogue  between  Hilas  and  Philonous." 


—  58  — 

mysticism,  and  draws  largely  from  Neo-Platonic  sources  for  his 
conceptions.  Jamblichus,  he  says,  furnishes  a  doctrine  that  "there 
is  a  principle  of  the  soul  higher  than  nature,  whereby  we  may  be 
raised  to  a  union  with  the  gods,  and  exempt  ourselves  from  fate."1 
"According  to  the  Platonic  philosophy,  ens  and  unnm  are  the 
same.  And  consequently  our  minds  participate  so  far  of  existence 
as  they  do  of  unity.  But  it  should  seem  that  personality  is  the 
indivisible  center  of  the  soul  or  mind,  which  is  a  monad  so  far 
forth  as  she  is  a  person.  Therefore  Person  is  really  that  which 
exists,  inasmuch  as  it  participates  in  the  Divine  unity:"2  Again,  he 
says:  "  Upon  mature  reflection,  the  person  or  mind,  of  all  created 
being,  seemeth  alone  indivisible  and  to  partake  most  of  unity.  But 
sensible  things  are  rather  considered  as  one  than  truly  so,  they 
being  in  a  perpetual  flux  or  succession  ever  differing  and  various. 
Nevertheless,  all  things  together  must  be  considered  as  one  uni- 
verse, one  by  the  connexion  and  order  of  its  parts,  which  is  the 
work  of  mind,  whose  unit  is,  by  Platonics,  supposed  a  participa- 
tion of  the  first  to  iv. "3  "Aristotle  himself,  in  his  third  book 
of  the  Soul,  saith  it  is  the  mind  that  maketh  each  thing  to  be  one. 
.  .  .  How  this  is  done  Themistius  is  more  particular,  observing 
that  as  being  conferreth  essence,  the  mind,  by  virtue  of  her  sim- 
plicity, conferreth  simplicity  upon  compound  beings.  And,  indeed, 
it  seemeth  that  the  mind,  so  far  forth  as  person,  is  individual. 
Therein  resembling  the  divine  one  by  participation,  and  imparting 
to  other  things  what  itself  participates  from  above.  This  is  agree- 
able to.  the  doctrine  of  the  ancients;  however  the  contrary  opinion 
of  supposing  number  to  be  an  original  primary  quality  in  things, 
independent  of  the  mind,  may  obtain  among  the  moderns."4 

Here  Berkeley  in  his  theory  of  personality  relies  upon  the 
concept  of  unity  not  only  to  exhibit  the  necessary  dependence  of 
the  finite  upon  the  infinite  mind,  but  also  to  differentiate  the  former 
from  the  latter.  "Number,"  he  now  says,  in  entire  agreement 
with  his  earlier  philosophy,  "  is  no  object  of  sense  :"  "  it  is  an  act 
of  the  mind.  The  same  thing  in  a  different  conception  is  one  or 
many."5  Unity  he  still  regards  as  a  creature  of  the  mind,  and 
not  something  existing  in  things  independent  of  the  mind;  yet  it 
is  no  longer  as  formerly  an  abstract  idea,  but  a  notion.  And  the 
notions,  as  we  have  seen,  are  in  Siris  identified  with  the  archetpyes 
or  ideas  of  Reason,  immanent  in  the  phenomena  of  sense.  The 
latter,  as  Berkeley  insists,   are  not   to  be  regarded  in  one  aspect 

1  "  Siris,"  §  272. 

2  Ibid,  §  346. 

3  Ibid,  §  350. 

*Idid,  §  356  and  357. 
5  Ibid,  §  288. 


—  59-- 

alone,  for  the  phenomenon  is  not  merely  the  complex  of  sensations 
which  has  been  marked  by  one  name,  and  so  reputed  as  a  Thing. 
The  Thing  is,  in  another  aspect,  as  the  presenied  object  of  con- 
sciousness, an  irreducible  fact;  it  must  finally  be  referred  to  its 
causal  source  and  receive  its  ultimate  explanation  in  objective 
Universal  Mind.  The  identity  of  the  thing  is  not  a  mere  ficti- 
tious identity,  for  the  unity  which  the  mind  introduces  into  sensa- 
tions has  its  counterpart  in  an  objective  unity  whose  source  is 
Universal  Mind.  As  the  finite  mind,  in  its  explanation  of  phe- 
nomena, procedes  from  synthesis  to  higher  synthesis,  by  the  redis- 
covery in  Time  of  the  archetypal  ideas  or  notions,  it  becomes 
aware  of  the  'Divine  unity  '  in  which  it  participates. 

But  while  person  is  really  that  which  exists,  inasmuch  as  it 
participates  in  the  Divine  Unity,  difference  is  not  lost;  for  it  is 
also  true  that  "the  mind  so  far  forth  as  person  is  individual." 
Personality  is  for  Berkeley  the  most  adequate  category  for  the 
complete  explanation  of  experience,  since  the  self  not  only  ex- 
presses the  highest  synthesis  but,  true  to  the  empirical  aspect  of 
things,  it  also  expresses  difference,  as  self  distinguished  from  self. 
My  experiences,  he  seems  to  say,  must  be  referred  to  a  higher 
source  than  myself,  and  there  is  a  cosmical  order  independent  of 
me;  yet,  in  a  very  real  sense  also,  these  experiences  are  mine,  and 
I  am  not  the  mere  theatre  for  the  play  of  passing  phenomena, 
since  in  my  abdity  to  discern  the  unphenomenal  character  whirh 
attaches  to  my  experiences,  in  the  significance  which  the  arche- 
typal ideas  have  for  me,  my  empirical  self  becomes,  like  my  other 
phenomenal  experiences,  the  symbol  of  a  higher  personality. 

But  there  is  another  reason  why  Berkeley,  in  his  final  account 
of  the  relation  of  the  self  to  God,  rejects  a  complete  identifica- 
tion of  the  self  with  God.  We  have  seen  that  in  his  early  philos- 
ophy, Berkeley's  conception  of  God  seems  unmistakably  to  be  of 
the  deistic  cast.  The  arbitrariness  of  the  divime  nature  language 
is  chiefly  put  forward;  God  is  seemingly  regarded  as  an  extraneous 
power. working  effects  in  us.  But  the  interpretability  of  this  lan- 
guage rests  for  us  upon  the  presupposition  of  a  necessary  unity  of 
the  finite  with  the  Absolute  Mind  or  Reason.  "Siris"  is  the  explica- 
tion of  this,  and  the  universals  of  Reason  which  formerly  received 
such  brief  recognition  are  the  means  whereby  we  arrive  at  the 
knowledge  of  an  objective  order  of  things,  which  as  the  deeper 
meaning,  is  the  completion  as  well  as  the  ground  of  Berkeley's  ear- 
lier idealism.  With  his  increasing  gnosticism,  his  growing  confi- 
dence in  the  universals  of  Reason,  Berkeley  is  apparently  more 
tolerant  of  views  which  in  strictness  cannot  be  called  theistic. 
"Whether  the  wT^c  be  abstracted  from  the  sensible  world,  and  con- 
sidered by  itself  as  distinct  from  and  presiding  over  the  created 
system;  or  whether  the  whole  Universe,  including  mind,  together 


—  60  — 

with  the  mundane  body,  is  conceived  to  be  God,  and  the  creatures 
to  be  partial  manifestations  of  the  Divine  essence — there  is  no 
Atheism  in  either  case,  whatever  misconception  there  may  be;  so 
long  as  Mind  or  Intellect  is  understood  to  preside  over,  govern 
and  conduct  the  whole  frame  of  things."1 

As  we  have  elsewhere  seen,  the  immanence  of  the  divine  Rea- 
son in  the  world  of  sense  is  the  view  which  is  now  favored  by 
Berkeley;  but  it  is  not  maintained  to  the  exclusion  of  the  theistic 
view  which  dominated  his  early  idealism:  and  in  this  he  avoids 
the  pantheism  towards  which  he  seems  tending  and  the  complete 
resolution  of  the  self  into  an  Absolute  Reason.3  It  is  true  that 
his  theistic  utterances  are  no  longer  dogmatic  assertions  as  for- 
merly. The  limitation  of  that  finite  knowledge  which  would  grasp 
the  infinite  is  now  more  clearly  recognized.  The  theistic  concep- 
tion of  God  comes  as  the  deeper  insight  into  the  ever  present  cre- 
ative Reason  which  informs  and  maintains  the  world.  It  comes  as 
a  conviction  that  as  man  in  his  rational  activity  is  made  aware  of 
a  higher  rational  self  which  is  the  completion  of  the  finite  and  the 
presupposition  of  our  knowledge  of  a  world,  so  may  this  higher 
self  be  more  completely  known  by  conceiving  it  in  analogy  with 
the  total  nature  of  man.  As  in  Berkeley's  idealism,  and  more 
expressly  in  the  later  form  which  it  takes  in  "  Siris,"  Reason  is  not 
to  be  absolutely  divorced  from  sense,  so  neither  is  Will  a  faculty 
distinct  from  Reason.  Not  Reason  alone,  but  Reason  and  Will, 
as  different  expressions  of  man's  spiritual  activity,  constitute  his 
inner  self. 

In  the  third  dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous  we  have 
already  seen  Berkeley's  statement  that  God  is  to  be  known  only  by 
reflecting  upon  the  self,  "by  heightening  its  powers  and  removing 
its  imperfections."  In  "Alciphron,  the  Minute  Philosopher,"  the 
question  of  the  legitimacy  of  this  process  comes  up.  The  inade- 
quacy of  finite  categories  is  recognized,  while  predication  by 
means  of  them  is  nevertheless  defended  by  reverting  to  the  schol- 
astic argument  that  they  are  applied  "by  way  of  eminence  and 
not  by  way  of  defect."4 

The  theistic  view,  which  he  thus  but  poorly  maintains  as 
against  pantheism,  is  perhaps  furnished  with  a  more  rational  basis 
if  one  reads  it  in  connection  with  his  later  utterances  with  respect 
to  the  notion,  and  the  function  which  we  found  must  be- assigned 

1  '  -Siris, ' '  §  326. 

-'Cf.  "  Siris,  '  §276,  287. 

3 '"La  large  tolerance  de  Berkeley  n'excommunie  pas  le  pantheism,  bien 
qu'elle  affiime  que  le  funds  de  l'etre,  en  Dieu  comme  en  nous,  est  ('indivisible 
unite  de  la  personne."  L.  Carrau:  "La  philosophie  religieuse  en  Angleterre;  " 
Paiis,  iSSS,  p,  27. 

4  "Divine  Visual  Language,"  §  19. 


—  61  — 

to  it  in  the  constitution  of  experience.  Viewed  in  this  light,  man's 
knowledge  of  God  is  but  the  farther  extension  of  his  knowledge 
of  the  phenomenal  order.  In  the  phenomenal  world  of  Berkeley 
we  are  not  cut  off  from  a  world  of  noumenal  existence,  for  in  the 
sense-material  which  is  subjected  to  the  unifying  work  of  finite 
conceptions  there  is  nothing  foreign  to  Reason.  In  the  generali- 
zations of  science,  by  means  of  which  is  made  possible  for  us  an 
orderly  and  connected  world  of  experience,  nay  even  in  perception 
itself,  we  are  already  transcending  the  merely  phenomenal.  Finally, 
in  the  highest  completed  synthesis,  the  Divine  Reason,  we  have 
merely  the  last  step  which  gives  meaning  to  the  whole.  Man  shares 
in  the  Universal  Reason,  and  it  is  only  by  his  participation  in  this 
Reason  that  he  is  enabled  to  take  cognizance  of  this  Unity,  which 
is  the  truest  explanation  of  himself  and  of  the  world  in  which  he 
lives.  But  in  man  Reason  and  Will  are  equally  fundamental,  alike 
universal  expressions  of  his  experience  of  himself,  and  together 
they  constitute  his  personality.  In  his  conception  of  God  Berke- 
ley refuses  to  be  be  content  with  mere  Reason  as  the  final  explana- 
tion of  things.  Reason,  as  so  conceived,  is  scarcely  differentiated 
from  Fate,  while  the  Reason  it  is  Berkeley's  purpose  to  discover  is 
a  purposeful  activity,  directed  toward  the  Supreme  Good;  it  is,  as 
he  tells  us,  Will  which  is  "conducted  and  applied  by  intellect." 
The  Divine  arbitrariness  is  still  retained;  God  is  Divine  Will  di- 
rected by  Divine  Reason.  Although  in  that  Reason  the  finite  is 
now  seen  to  participate,  the  key  to  the  knowledge  of  God  is  not 
only  the  rational,  but  the  moral  implication  contained  in  man's 
knowledge  of  himself. 

1  Siris,  §  254. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

The  relations  which  obtain  either  by  way  of  agreement  or 
contrast  between  the  earlier  and  later  phases  of  Berkeley's  ideal- 
ism, and  which  have  been  exhibited  somewhat  in  detail  with  respect 
to  the  three  objects  of  human  knowledge, — ideas,  relations,  and 
that  third  class  of  existences,  denominated  by  Berkeley,  spirits, 
may  now  be  briefly  summarized. 

With  respect  to  ideas  we  distinguished  between  three  classes: 
(i)  the  sensation;  (2)  the  phenomenal  object,  which  is  in  one 
aspect  a  mere  complex  of  sensations,  and  which  in  another  aspect 
remains  an  objective  datum  of  consciousness,  ultimately  explained 
only  by  reference  to  the  objective  mind  of  God;  (3)  the  archetype 
or  Idea  of  Reason.  The  early  philosophy  of  Berkeley  exhibits 
his  insistance  upon  the  subjective  character  of  phenomena,  while 
in  the  later  philosophy  of  "  Siris,"  their  objective  character  is 
brought  to  light  by  means  of  the  immanent  universals,  ideas,  whose 
existence  had  in  the  "Principles"  a  tacit  recognition  in  the  ad- 
mission that  there  are  universal  notions. 

Turning  to  the  connection  of  ideas,  we  found  that  in  the  ear- 
lier philosophy  the  principle  of  Causality  is  declared  to  be  inope- 
rative between  ideas,  as  they  are  here  regarded,  in  their  particular 
and  subjective  aspect.  A  custom  or  habit  of  relating  passively 
experienced  sensations  is  apparently  sufficient  to  account  for  the 
presence  of  the  external  phenomenal  object.  The  theory  is  in  the 
first  instance  differentiated  from  the  subsequent  humlan  traduction 
of  it  only  in  the  implicit  recognition  of  the  fundamental  unity  which 
subsists  between  the  finite  and  the  Divine  Mind,  in  the  fact  that  the 
former  possesses  the  capability  of  rationally  interpreting  the  sensa- 
tion symbols  which  ultimately  depend  upon  the  causal  activity  of 
Divine  Will.  Again,  in  the  "Principles  of  Human  Knowledge"  and 
in  the  "Dialogues,"  Berkeley  furnished  ample  acknowledgment  of 
the  fact  that  the  phenomenal  object,  for  which  he  prefers  the  term 
'idea'  rather  than  thing,  has  not  a  merely  subjective  existence, 
although,  he  declares  it  is  meaningless  if  we  attempt  to  conceive  it 
out  of  all  relation  to  percipient  consciousness.  His  sufficient  ac- 
knowledgment of  this  is,  however,  in  this  early  phase  of  his  ideal- 
ism, unsupported  otherwise  than  by  citing  the  fact  that  ideas  of 
sense  are  apparently  independent  of  human  volition,  being  pro- 
duced in  a  regular,  orderly  and  coherent  series. 

But,  as  we  approach  Berkeley's  later  realistic  position,  we  find 
him  evidently  aware  that  the  objectivity  of   phenomena  cannot  be 


—63— 

established  in  so  simple  a  way.  Accordingly,  in  "Alciphron,"  the 
objective  implications  of  the  phenomenal  object  are  made  more 
expressly  the  subject  of  study,  which  results  in  the  discovery  that 
any  perception  is  not  merely  the  sum  of  particular  sensations,  but 
that,  on  the  contrary,  in  order  to  the  recognition  of  any  perceived 
object,  there  is  involved  the  work  of  unconscious  rational  infer- 
ence.1 A  few  sensations  serve  as  signs  by  which  we  are  led  to  expect 
other  unperceived  sensations,  provided  certain  conditions  be  ful- 
filled. These  present  sensations  are  nothing  of  themselves,  but 
only  as  they  are  signs  of  relations  whose  permanence  and  objectivity 
are  due  to  the  constitutive  universals  of  Supreme  Mind.2  Imme- 
diate perception  is  thus  seen  to  imply  mediation;  and  "faith  in 
an  established,  objective  order  of  association  between  the  two  kinds 
of  sense  phenomena  (visual  and  tactual)  is  the  basis  of  the  con- 
structive activity  of  intellect  in  all  inductive  interpretation  of  sensi- 
ble things."3  Berkeley's  association  of  ideas  is,  as  Fraser  points 
out,4  not  merely  subjective  but  objective,  although  his  position  of 
objective  association  is  not  reached  critically;  it  is,  says  Fraser,  his 
"religious  faith  in  the  constancy  of  the  divine  constitution  of  the 
cosmos."  "Objective  association  originates  the  notions  of  sensa- 
tions as  significant  signs,  and  belief  in  the  invariableness  of  the 
relations  of  which  they  are  significant."  Subjective  association,  on 
the  other  hand,  "helps  us  to  recollect  the  meaning  of  each  partic- 
ular sensation  and  connect  the  signs  with  their  significance  in  our 
imagination."5 

In  the  latest  phase  of  his  idealism,  represented  by  "  Siris,"  we 
have  seen  that  the  'judgment  of  suggestion'  ripens  into  the  explicit 
recognition  of  universals  of  Reason,  or  the  constitutive  notions, 
imminent  in  sense.  The  legitimacy  of  Berkeley's  final  resort  to 
the  notion,  of  which  he  makes  such  important  use  in  establishing  a 
more  consistent  foundation  for  his  early  idealism,  was  found  in  the 
fact  that  his  early  nominalism  was  directed  merely  against  the 
hypostatization  of  conceptions  in  abstract  separation  from  mind  as 
percipient,  while  a  more  concrete  universal  was  admitted  by  him 
even  in  his  early  theory,  although  its  function  in  the  constitution 
of  experience  was  but  imperfectly  conceived. 

Finally,  our  consideration  of  Berkeley's  third  class  of  exist- 
ences, viz:  Spirits,  revealed  that,  corresponding  to  Berkeley's 
growing  insight  into  the  nature  of   the  phenomenal  object,  there 

1  Cf .  Wenley;  "British  Thought  and  Modern  Speculation,"  p.  149  of  Scot- 
tish Rev.,  vol.  19. 

''  Fraser;  "  Philosophy  of  Berkeley." 

3Ibid,  p.  395. 

*  Fraser;  "Philosophy  of  Berkeley"  in  "Life,  Letters  and  Unpublished 
Writings,"  p.  304. 

5  Ibid,  p.  404. 


—(54— 

also  emerges  a  theory  of  the  self  and  God  which  is  more  consistent 
with  the  rationalism  that  is  implicitly  the  basis  of  his  theory  of  the 
world.  That  the  world  is  to  be  regarded  as  my  individual  repre- 
sentation, had  never  been  maintained  by  Berkeley,  as  some  would 
have  us  believe.  Its  ultimate  dependence  upon  Divine,  rational 
will  had  been  affirmed  at  the  outset,  the  guarantee  for  its  indepen- 
dence of  me  consisting  in  the  very  fact  of  Berkeley's  insistence 
that  perception  and  conception  should  not  be  thought  to  exist  in 
absolute  separation  from  one  another.  The  particular  is  indeed 
the  conscious  datum  to  which  introspective  analysis  of  the  pheno- 
menal object  conducts  us;  but  the  conceptual  existence  of  the 
latter  is  as  much  a  basal  fact  of  consciousness  as  the  particulars  by 
means  of  which  it  translates  itself  into  the  concrete  perceptual  ex- 
perience of  individual  minds.  Accordingly  the  early  theory, which 
tells  us  that  particular  sensations  are  merely  the  signs  by  which  we 
are  enabled  to  interpret  the  rational  language  of  a  supreme  Author 
of  Nature,  becomes,  by  means  of  the  later  development  of  the 
notion,  the  obverse  of  Berkeley's  rationalistic  philosophy,  in  which 
we  are  led  to  see  that  the  relations  which  subsist  between  pheno 
mena,  in  the  organic  system  of  human  experience,  are  not  mere 
subjective  fictions,  but  objective  relations,  discoverable  by  us,  be- 
cause of  the  essential  unity  which  obtains  between  the  finite  and 
the  Universal  Mind,  upon  which  these  relations  ultimately  depend. 

Yet,  as  we  have  seen,  in  this  unity  of  the  self  with  God,  to 
which  he  finally  conducts  us  in  Siris,  difference  is  not  merged  in 
mere  identity.  The  world  is  also  in  a  sense  the  representation  of 
the  finite  self,  not  because  of  the  mere  fact  that  man  is  a  percipient 
organism,  but  rather  because  of  that  very  unity  which  obtains  be- 
tween the  finite  and  the  infinite  in  virtue  of  which  man  possesses 
an  'imperishable  personality  all  his  own',1  sharing,  as  he  does,  in 
the  universal  constitutive  ideas.  Through  man,  by  means  of  these 
universals,  the  world  is  constituted,  and  is  representative  alike  of 
an  eternal  or  timeless  order  of  things  subsisting  in  the  mind  of 
God,  though  also  of  the  subjective  interpretation  which  man  puts 
upon  his  experience.  From  this  subjectivity,  man,  by  voluntary, 
willingness  of  insight  into  the  eternal  order,  seeks  to  free  himself, 
and  thus  reconstitute  the  world  in  the  likeness  of  God.  Thus  the 
early  doctrine  that  nature  is  in  its  totality  an  interpretable  system, 
dependent  upon  a  Power  that  is  not  ourselves,  seems  borne  out  in 
Siris  by  his  theory  of  the  personality  or  'spiritual  individuality  ,2 
of  man. 

It  must,  however,  be  kept  in  mind  that  the  separate  strands  of 
Berkeley's  philosophy  were  never  united  in  an  organic  whole.    The 

1  Wenley;   "  British  Thought  and  Modern  Speculation;  "  Scottish  Rev.,  Vol. 
19,  p.  154. 

2Fraser;   '' Berkeley,"  p.  207. 


—65— 

manifold  implications  of  the  new  point  of  view,  consequent  upon 
his  disposal  of  the  fiction  of  abstract  matter,  were  but  imperfectly 
conceived.  The  work  of  establishing  an  idealistic  philosophy 
which  should  take  the  place  of  previous  materialistic  theories  was 
only  partially  sketched,  never  definitely  executed.  Furthermore, 
his  philosophy  was  always  in  a  state  of  transition,  and  accordingly 
one  cannot  regard  any  particular  phase  of  its  development  as  an 
adequate  expression  of  Berkeley's  complete  thought  about  reality. 
Empiricism,  which  is  by  far  the  dominant  principle  of  his  early 
theorizing,  long  ago  yielded  up  to  more  consistent  systematizers 
material  valuable  not  alone  for  psychological  method  but  for  gen- 
eral scientific  enquiry.  On  the  other  hand,  the  final  idealistic 
position  which  he  reached  in  Siris  was  presented  in  too  fragmentary 
a  form  to  be  of  abiding  service  to  subsequent  philosophy. 

"Elle  n'  etait  pas  fausse,  mais  incomplete  " Ja  Siris  n'  est  qu'  un 

developpement  plein  de  grandeur  de  ce  que  nous  ont  revele  les  premieres  oeuvres. 
Berkeley  est  arrive  au  seuil  de  la  vieillesse,  il  a  lutle  jusqu'  ici  contre  ce  qu'il  emit 
le  mal  et  1'  erreur;  nul  polemiste  via  eie  plus  ardent,  plus  soupple,  plus  inlaligable; 
il  a  poursuivi  dans  tous  ses  retrenchments  snccessifs  la  matiere  en  soi;  il  a  refute 
Collins,  Mandeville,  Shaftesbury,  combattu  1'  elendue-substance  de  Descaites,  la 
monade  de  Leibniz,  1'  attraction  newtonienne  et  jusqu'  un  principe  du  calcul 
infinitesimal;  c'  est  encore  un  soldat  de  la  verite  qu'  il  est  parti  pour  les  Bermudas. 
Le  voila  dans  sa  retraite  de  Cloyne;  sa  philosophic,  comme  sa  vie,  a  cesse  d'etre 
militante,  il  lit  et  medite,  laisse  sa  pensee  poursuivre  son  ascension  de  principe  en 
principe,  jusqu'  a  1'  Un  supreme;  peu  soucieux  des  objections  et  des  pteuves, 
s'  enchantant,  sans  trop  s'  interroger  sur  1'  authenticite  des  texies,  des  echos  de  la 
sagesse  antique,  ou  il  croit  surprtndre  comme  le  souffle  affaibli  d'une  inspiration 
sacree.  C  est  ainsi  que  Platon,  parvenu  au  bout  de  ses  jours  et  au  sommet  de  son 
genie,  laisse  a  de  plus  jeunes  les  procedes  de  refutation,  les  amies  de  la  dispute, 
et,  ressuscitant  les  vieilles  doctrines  pour  leur  donner  un  plus  beau  sen-,  expose 
plus  qu'il  ne  demontre  dans  ses  oeuvres  magistrales  et  seveines,  le  Time,  les  Lois. 
Une  critique  exigeante  peut  les  traiterde  romans  philosophiques,  comme  la  Siiis; 
nous  croyons  qu' elle  aurait  tort.  Quand  une  grande  intelligence  a  pense  toute  sa 
vie  ce  qu' elle  a  pense  a  le  fin,  en  pleine  posstssion  d' elle-meme,  et  ce  qui  doit 
nous  interesser  le  plus,  et  qui  dans  la  mesure  que  les  productions  humaines  en  sont 
capables,  doit  contenir  le  plus  de  verite."  1 

If,  however,  Berkeley  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  thorough-going 
empiricist,  nor  yet  as  a  consistent  rationalist,  the  suggestiveness  of 
his  theory  as  a  whole  should  not  on  that  account  be  minimized. 
His  early  theory,  in  which  it  is  claimed  that  the  existence  of  sen- 
sible objects  always  involves  a  reference  to  percipient  conscious- 
ness, "  denotes  a  faithfulness  to  experience  "  a  that  is  not  without 
its  value,  when  corrected  by  the  subsequent  view  that  mere  com- 
plexes of  sensations,  actually  present  in  the  individual  mind,  do  not 
of  themselves  constitute  the  substantiality  of  the  object,  which  is 
also  a  conceptual  unity. 

But  Berkeley's  close  identification  of  perception  and  concep- 
tion has,  because  of  the  imperfect  manner  in  which  he  explicates 

1  L.  carrau;  La  philosophic  religieuse,  pp.  iS,  20. 

2  Green;  Philosophical  Works,  Vol.  I,  Intro.  §  173. 


—60— 

the  rationalistic  elements  of  his  philosophy,  been  the  occasion  of 
not  a  little  misunderstanding  with  regard  to  his  true  attitude  toward 
the  phenomenal  object,  which  he  substitutes  for  the  thing,  inde- 
pendent of  consciousness.  Thus  Green,  while  admitting  that 
"Berkeley  knew  that  pure  theism  (which  he  wished  to  establish) 
has  no  foundation  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  there  is  nothing  real 
apart  from  thought,"  says  that  "he  failed  to  distinguish  this  true 
proposition — 'there  is  nothing  real  apart  from  thought' — from  this 
false  one,  its  virtual  contradictory — '  there  is  nothing  other  than 
feeling;'"  and  in  substituting  simply  'idea'  for  Locke's  'idea  of  a 
thing,'  Berkeley  failed,  Green  further  tells  us,  to  take  "the  truer 
view  of  thought  and  its  object,  as  together  in  essential  correlation 
constituting  the  real,"  and  "merged  both  thing  and  idea  in  the 
indifference  of  simple  feeling."1 

Of  course  upon  this  view  that  Berkeley  has  reduced  thought 
and  its  world  to  simple  feeling,  objectivity  is  done  away  with;  and 
bodies  and  things,  suggested  by  feeling,  are  not  real,  since  present 
sensations  are  the  only  reality.  But  thus  "to  isolate  the  phrase, 
esse  is  percipi,  more  particularly  if  the  pcrcipi  be  held  to  imply  ex- 
clusively the  perception  of  a  single  individual  through  the  medium 
of  his  senses  only  [as  Green  in  the  above  passages  seems  to  insist] 
is  to  eviscerate  Berkeley.  "2  For  "he  does  not  declare 
that  we  can  possess  a  knowledge  only  of  states  of  our  own  conscious- 
ness,"3 since  mere  feeling  present  in  any  individual  subjective  con- 
sciousness, apart  from  the  objective  conditions  which  render  feeling 
interpretable  is,  on  Berkeley's  theory,  an  abstraction  no  less  absurd 
than  abstract  matter.4  The  esse  of  things  indeed  implies  pereipi,  yet 
not  alone  this  but  coneipi  or  intelligi.  Therefore  to  isolate  the 
former  phrase  is  not  only  to  neglect  the  later  realistic  development 
of  Berkeley's  theory,  but  to  substitute  an  imagined  abstraction  in 
place  of  Berkeley's  concrete  particular.  The  substantiality  of  the 
world  of  external  existence,  as  distinct  from  the  images  and  fancies 
of  the  subjective  consciousness,  is  for  Berkeley  a  fact  not  to  be 
doubted.  The  mere  Being6  and  substantiality  of  things  is  the  least 
that  can  be  said  about  them,  and  the  true  question  of  idealism  is 
not,  does  matter  exist?  since  the  materiality  of  the  world  cannot 
be  doubted;  but  rather  what  do  we  mean  by  saying  that  there  is  a 
material  world,  i.  e.,  what  is  the  truth  about  matter? 

The  answer  is,  that  from  our  thought  of  the  existence  of  the 

1  Green;   Philosophical  Work?,  Vol.  I,  Intro. 

'2Wenley;  British  Thought  and  Modern  Speculation,  p.  145. 

3  Ibid,  p.  154. 

4Fraser;  "Philosophy  of    Berkeley,"  in    Life,  Letters,   etc.,  of   Berkeley, 

P-  371- 

5  It  is  not  uninteresting  at  this  point  to  compare  Berkeley's  idea  of  being  with 
that  of  Hegel.  The  former  says:  "The  general  idea  of  Being  appeareth  to  me 
the  most  abstract  and  incomprehensible  of  all  other." — cf.  Principles  of  Human 
Knowledge,  §  17. 


—  67  — 

material  object  we  cannot  abstract  that  very  condition  which 
seems  necessary  to  its  being,  viz.,  the  condition  that  it  shall  be  an 
object  for  perceptual  consciousness.  But  this  does  not  mean  that 
its  existence  is  entirely  comprehended  in  my  perception  of  the 
object;  that  it  is  nothing  apart  from  me;  but  only  that  perception 
is  a  universal  and  necessary  condition  of  the  being  of  an  object. 
The  two  have,  as  it  were,  a  kind  of  organic  relation,  and  cannot 
be  separated.  What  is  not  for  consciousness,  for  the  passive  ex- 
perience of  perception,  no  less  than  what  is  not  constituted  by 
thought,  is  a  mere  abstraction. 

The  view  that  the  Berkelian  idea  is  equivalent  to  mere  feeling 
involves  a  most  ludicrous  construction  of  Berkeley's  theory  of  the 
object  not  immediately  present  in  perception.  Does  Berkeley 
mean  that,  in  turning  my  back  upon  the  object,  I  thereby  anni- 
hilate it?  In  this  respect  at  least,  as  Mr.  Wenley  has  said,  "he 
was  not  the  fool  his  critics  would  have  had  him."  For,  in  the 
first  place,  even  if  the  object  has  an  existence  only  under  the  con- 
dition, of  sense-perception;  if  that  condition  be  not  fulfilled,  we 
have  yet  no  right  to  speak  of  the  object  being  annihilated,  for  that 
would  mean  that  we  first  take  the  object  apart  from  perceptual 
consciousness,  and  then  conceive  its  destruction.  If  the  object 
has  an  existence  only  in  relation  to  some  perceptual  consciousness, 
if  it  gets  its  meaning  only  as  it  is  for  a  percipient  subject,  then  in 
the  absence  of  its  being  perceived,  we  cannot  say  that  the  object 
is  destroyed  and  again  flashed  back  into  existence  when  the  condi- 
tion of  sense-perception  is  fulfilled;  object  would  simply  be  mean- 
ing/ess apart  from  sense-perception. 

However,  this  is  to  lay  exclusive  emphasis  upon  the  percipi. 
Upon  Berkeley's  principles,  Fraser  says,1  the  thing  may  be  taken 
to  exist,  when  we  are  absent  from  it,  in  percisely  the  same  way 
that  the  thing  present  to  sense  exists,  i.  e.,  in  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other,  actual  sensations  signify  a  conceivable  object.  The 
immediate  object  being  rationally  constituted,  Berkeley  does  not 
mean  that,  in  merely  thinking  of  the  object  not  present  in  my  per- 
ception, I  by  this  means  recreate  it,  but  that,  in  my  thought  of  the 
object,  I  again  recognize  the  universal  conditions  which  now,  as 
at  the  time  when  the  object  was  present  to  my  perception,  consti- 
tute its  independence  of  me.  Does  he  not  mean  this  in  the  fol- 
lowing? "The  trees  are  in  the  park,  i.  e.,  whether  I  will  or  no. 
Let  me  but  go  thither  and  open  my  eyes  by  day,  and  I  shall  not 
avoid  seeing  them."2  Or  again,  "bodies  do  exist  whether  we 
think  of  them  or  no,  they  being  taken  in  a  two-fold  sense;  ,(i)  Col- 
lections of  thoughts,  (2)  Collections  of  powers  to  cause  these 
thoughts.      These  latter  exist,  though  perhaps  a  parti  rei  it  may  be 

1  Fraser;  "  Philosophy  of  Berkeley  in  Life  Letters  and  Unpublished  Writings," 
p.  382. 

"  Commonplace  Book,  p.  474. 


—  68— 

one  simple  perfect  power"1 — which,  as  we  afterward  learn,  is 
Supreme  Mind. 

Green,  however,  in  considering  the  philosophical  idealism  of 
Berkeley  in  its  bearing  upon  science,  says  that  "if  physical  truths 
imply  permanent  relations  Berkeley's  theory  properly  excludes 
them."2  Quoting  section  58  of  the  Principles,  he  explains  that 
this  passage  meant  for  Berkeley  that  the  motion  of  the  earth  would 
begin  as  soon  as  we  were  there  to  see  it;  while  for  us  it  means  that 
it  is  now  going  on  as  an  established  law  of  nature  which  may  be 
collected  from  the  phenomena.  This  seems,  however,  to  lay  too 
exclusive  emphasis  upon  the  accident  of  sense-perception.  What 
Berkeley  means  appears  rather  to  be  that  the  'established  rules  of 
nature'  are  certain  permanent  conditions  of  existence  which  the 
mind  in  its  conceptual  activity  is  enabled  to  discover.  Our  belief 
in  these  primary  conditions  is  ultimately  grounded  upon  our  belief 
in  Supreme  Rational  Will,  of  which  these  laws  or  conditions  are 
the  expression.  Once  discovered,  I  know  that  the  phenomena, 
which  may  be  subsumed  under  these  laws,  actually  occur  in  ac- 
cordance with  them.  The  earth  moves  whether  I  perceive  it  or 
not,  for  in  my  thought  of  the  motion  of  the  earth,  I  recognize  that 
the  accident  of  my  individual  perception  is  not  involved  in  the  ob- 
jective conditions  underlying  my  presumption  that  the  earth  moves. 

Still  the  universal  condition,  under  which  the  mind  arrives  at 
a  knowledge  of  the  laws  which  subsist  between .  phenomena,  is  that 
of  sense-perception.  Conception  is  only  an  abstraction  from  the 
concrete  life  of  mind  or  spirit;  we  have  only  a  relative  universal  as 
likewise  a  relative  particular;  therefore  mere  relations  or  abstract 
conditions  of  existence  are  not  to  be  hypostatized  and  taken  in 
absolute  separation  from  perceptual  consciousness.  This  is  the 
logic  of  Berkeley's  polemic  against  'abstract  ideas.'  Accordingly 
the  motion  of  the  earth,  as  also  any  phenomenal  object  not  present 
to  my  perception,  must  be  regarded  as  being  in  a  certain  sense  per- 
ceived. Nor  does  this  imply  for  Berkeley  the  idea  of  God  as  a 
percipient  being  in  a  human  and  anthropomorphic  sense,  for 
'God,' it  is  said  in  "Siris,"  'has  no  sensory.'3  Perception  is  finally 
translated  into  a  system  of  rational  relations  which  are  intuited 
rather  than  perceived.  The  world  is  ultimately  a  rationally  con- 
stituted cosmos,  whose  intelligible  relations  are  at  once  the  crea- 
tion and  the  object  of  Supreme  Rational  Will  or  Person.  What- 
ever difficulties  attach  to  this  view, — and  they  are  doubtless  many, 
it  at  least  avoids  the  extreme  of  the  rationalistic  view  by  refusing 
to  regard  the  ultimate  unity,  to  which  experience  must  be  sub- 
jected, as  a  mere  system  of  relations  apart  from  the  concrete  life  of 
conscious  personality. 

1  " Commonplace  Book"   in   " Life,  Letters,"  etc.,  p.  486. 
*  Green;   Philosophical  Works,  Vol.  I,  Introduction. 
3  "Siris;  "  §  289. 


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} 


—  71  — 

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Note. — For  detailed  reference  to  Berkeley's  commentators  v. 
Krauth's  "  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  through  which 
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